


Völuspá

by anax imperator (anax)



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003), Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Brotherhood doesn't exist because it literally didn't when I wrote this in 2005, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 18:55:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 50,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14796089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anax/pseuds/anax%20imperator
Summary: With Edward missing and presumed dead, Roy has turned to a homunculus of his former lover.  Against the backdrop of war, Roy and Lust have to determine what it means to be human.





	1. wider and wider through all worlds I see

Roy hadn't even had time for his morning coffee before he found out that it was going to be a terrible day. He managed to roll out of bed without conking his head on the metal side of the cot, which was an improvement. It was never good for morale to see one's commanding officer walking around all day with an enormous goose egg, and Roy had treated his immediate staff to that sight far too often lately. Besides that, Lust always had something snarky to say whenever Roy injured himself getting out of bed. So that, at least, was looking up, and he even managed to stagger over to the wash basin at the side of the tent and find his razor to shave without cutting himself or knocking anything over.

Things started to go downhill immediately after that, however.

"Wonder what's going on?" he asked, because the sheer amount of activity going on in the camp around his tent was beginning to sink into his gradually-improving awareness. The question was really rhetorical, because if it was important, someone would come inform him, but he got an answer anyway.

"Mmmm," purred Lust from the corner, and the thing stretched lazily in the corner of Roy's eye. "I hear gunfire in the distance."

That was enough to wake any man up, and Roy hastily finished shaving and reached for his uniform. It was at about that moment that the deferent scratch came from the entry flap of his tent, and a soldier's voice that Roy didn't immediately recognize said, "Sir? Are you awake? Sir, the Lieutenant Colonel requests you to come take a look at something at the north campside lookout post."

Well, someone had come to inform him. It must have been important.

Lust followed him up to the lookout post. Roy ordered the thing to stay behind, but Lust never listened to him and followed anyway. Hawkeye gave the homunculus a withering look as Roy approached, tucking in the flap of his uniform jacket as he walked, but she didn't say anything about Lust this time.

"Sir," she said, and moved aside to make room for him. There were an awful lot of people at the lookout post, far too many uniformed bodies just standing around gaping through binoculars, and Roy frowned.

"What are all these people doing here?" he said, annoyed, and that was all it took to send most of them scattering. Lust smirked at them as they went. It was cold up in the lookout post, built into the crest of a ridge to the north of the camp, just a patched-together claptrap of wood and rope and canvas that would go down in a moment if the enemy were to storm the ridge. It wasn't made to be defended, and it wasn't made to be comfortable; the north wind whistled through the gaps in the boards, unimpeded by either vegetation or the pitiful efforts of humans. Lust leaned out over the front side of the post, peering north, his scanty black clothing and golden hair brushed by the wind.

There was definitely some activity going on to the northeast, and Hawkeye offered her binoculars to Roy. "It started about ten minutes ago, General," she said. "It looks like they're moving, but they don't seem to be coming this way."

With the binoculars, the anthill roiling motion to the northeast resolved into smoke and dust and rolling vehicles. Had it been coming toward the camp, Roy would have been sure it was an attack of some kind ... although whether the Drachmen were attacking or being attacked was not clear. The fact that the formation appeared to be aimed somewhat to the side of the Amestrian camp was puzzling. It was too far away to hear anything, but he trusted Lust's sharper ears ... there was almost certainly a fight going on over there. The dust and smoke obscured any identifying colors that the respective sides might have been flying, and Roy somehow suspected that neither side was flying any colors at all.

"Send out a couple of scouts," he said. "They're fighting someone all right, and we need to know who."

"Right away, sir." Hawkeye turned away, shouting for one of her subordinates. Roy leaned on the edge of the lookout post, much as Lust had been doing earlier, although the cold wind was harsh on his skin, chilling his face and burning his ears. The homunculus behaved as if he felt nothing, and probably the thing didn't.

A morning attack. Not something Roy found completely out of the ordinary, but the fact that his camp wasn't involved was a surprise. Roy didn't like surprises. They were usually nasty ones.

"I can smell the gunpowder," said Lust abruptly. Roy glanced toward his companion, and found that they were alone in the post now, except for a single soldier who looked far too young to be enlisted, and who was probably the regular lookout. The soldier was eyeing Lust, but when he noticed Roy glaring at him, he quickly looked out toward the activity to the northeast. Lust was stretching, languidly like a cat, with hands on the side of the post and compact body extended out behind him, and when he glanced toward Roy, his mud-yellow eyes were seductive.

"Quit it," said Roy, irritated.

"I can smell the gunpowder," said Lust again, and licked one finger to raise it into the wind. "But the wind isn't correct for that. I wonder how I can smell it then?" The thing laughed, and his claws clicked on the board.

It took a moment for Roy to figure out what the homunculus was trying to say. "Lieutenant Colonel!" he yelled, and Hawkeye, who had not gone very far, came dashing back toward him. Roy stepped down out of the post to meet her halfway. "Mobilize the camp," he told her. "Prepare for an attack. Probably from the west or southwest. Contact the advanced perimeter. Wherever it's coming from, they've probably been killed."

"Yes, sir," she said, and turned away immediately, shouting more orders and running full-tilt toward the communications center. Roy started toward the officers mess, with Lust slinking along at his heels; they had a little while yet, and he'd deal with this much better if he had some coffee.

"I'd love to fuck you in the middle of a battle," the thing whispered in his ear as he walked, and Roy turned and swatted at it.

"Not now, Lust," he said, in his best I-have-better-things-to-worry-about-than-you tone.

"Come on," cooed the homunculus. "It's just going to be a lot of killing and shouting for awhile. Nobody will even notice you're gone."

The thing almost ran into him when Roy stopped short and turned to glare. "I don't need this right now. _Thank you_ for your help, now stop this. Immediately."

All around him, the camp was coming to anxious life, commanders shouting orders, weapons clicking as they were checked and loaded, men running to their posts; in the middle distance, he could hear the roar of tanks as the engines were started. Roy resumed his walk to the officers mess, although now it more resembled a stalk, and Lust pouted behind him but said no more. He got his coffee and drank it slowly in what he suspected would be the last halfway-peaceful moments of the day. Lust lounged across the table on his back, hair dripping down over the side, in the best fuck-me pose Roy had ever seen him adopt that didn't involve actually spreading his legs and taking off his clothes. Roy snarled in disgust and turned away, but a few minutes later was running his hands through that thick golden hair.

It felt like it always had. Like nothing had ever changed.

Then one of Hawkeye's subordinates, a young second lieutenant named Taylor, came into the officers' mess to inform Roy that the Delta-six advanced perimeter group was not reporting in, and that was the doom of Roy's morning coffee.

* * *

The attack was an utter rout for the Drachmen. They hadn't sent a very large force, counting on surprise and the distraction of the decoy "attack" going on to the northeast to allow them deep into the Amestrian camp before the alarm went up. They met a fully prepared Amestrian army instead. The decoy division to the northeast turned toward the Amestrian camp as soon as Roy's forces were engaged with the surprise attack, but the battle with the attackers to the south went so decidedly in the favor of the Amestrians that the decoy division diverted course long before hitting the camp advanced perimeter, and returned to their own camp just across the Drachman border.

Prisoners had been taken. They were being interrogated before the night fell on that short winter day.

Roy left the interrogations to others. Once the battle itself had been decided, and the security of the camp ensured for the moment, he decided that he had an urgent need to know just what the hell had happened on the intelligence side, that the Drachmen were able to catch the camp so close to being unprepared. How precisely did one move a substantial amount of men and equipment all the way around a supposedly alert encampment without being noticed?

Dealing with the intelligence corps took several more hours.

He came out of the command center and was unsurprised to find that it was long past dusk; he wasn't even hungry, although he'd eaten almost nothing all day. Lust shadowed him, as always, never entirely out of reach.

Weary as he was, Roy took the time to greet his soldiers as he passed them, and he took the time to take the long way through the camp on his way back to his tent. That was one mistake that he'd learned from Ishbal ... a commander should never seem untouchable, should never be unapproachable. An army should never be asked to die for a commander they had never even seen. Hawkeye, who nominally agreed with this principle, would thin her lips whenever she found out that Roy had been touring the camp. She never said anything, but she never had to. Roy knew what her objection was ... it wasn't so much that putting himself in reach of his soldiers made Roy vulnerable to spies and assassins, although there was that.

Spies and assassins were among the least of Roy's worries, and for precisely the same reason Hawkeye disliked it when he went around the camp.

He stopped for a moment to say hello to a group of wounded enlisted playing poker under the medical tent awning. They invited him into their game, but he only smiled and commended them for their performance today. The medical tent was bustling, so he didn't go inside; later, in the morning probably, he'd have to come and talk to those who had survived the night. In the past, he'd often tried to talk to the ones who wouldn't, but he'd found that he only got in the doctors' way, and it depressed him to see good men and women who were dying. Roy didn't want to be responsible for obstructing medical care to the critically injured, and he told himself that it wasn't cowardice to wait until morning to see the survivors.

Lust, thankfully, said nothing, although Roy could see the thing's smirk out of the corner of his eye as he left the area.

After making a full circuit of the camp, Roy entered his own tent and collapsed, fully-clothed, onto the cot without bothering to turn on the lamp.

Gentle fingers were on his back and shoulders immediately. "Let me take this off," purred Lust, stroking the braid on the epaulets and tugging on the back of his collar. "Let me make you comfortable, Colonel."

The voice was _his_ voice, the rank the one _he_ always used, and Roy moaned.

"Stop it, Lust," he said weakly. He was so tired.

"You know you don't want me to stop. Come on, let me take this off of you." Those skilled, spidery fingers plucked at his jacket, and Roy rolled over to let them unfasten it, moved to assist them in taking it off. He could barely see the homunculus' silhouette in the darkness, against a patch of dim, diffuse light coming from somewhere and hitting the roof of the tent. His shirt was opened next, and cool fingers were stroking his skin.

"Stop it," he said again, but when the creature bowed his head to kiss Roy's sternum, wetly browse Roy's nipple, he moaned softly once more. The thing _smelled_ like Edward, _sounded_ like Edward. His hair had the same weight and texture as Edward's, his body had Edward's neat and narrow shape. Although the homunculus didn't really talk the way Edward used to, in the darkness, it was hard to tell the difference.

"You don't really want me to stop, Colonel," purred Lust, and Roy gave a small, pained whimper, because _that_ was exactly something that Edward would say, when he was at his most minxish and teasing. Roy buried his fingers in that mane of long, thick hair and, feeling the encouragement, Lust settled in for an easy seduction.

It wasn't as if Roy _wanted_ this creature around him. Particularly when he was trying to fight a war, there were so many ways that it was unwise to have Lust in his company. The homunculus' name was _Lust_ for starters, and refused to leave Roy's side, going from his tent at night to his consultations with his brigade commanders by day. The number of rumors about his sexual involvement with the homunculus were exceeded only by the rumors of Lust's involvement as a spy for the other side. If Roy had been able to exert any actual control over his companion, he would have driven the creature away from him long before now.

_That_ fight, however, was one that, while Roy was reasonably certain he could win, would cost him so much that not even the considerable benefit of having Lust away from him could induce him to try.

"Tell me something that you remember," he whispered, as that wet mouth moved up toward his throat. Not as warm as Edward's - the Sin's flesh was always slightly cool to the touch - but warm enough, warm enough.

"Mmmm." Lapping like an eager cat at Roy's throat and jaw, Lust considered the question. When the homunculus lay like this, settled lazily atop Roy's body with his near-perpetual erection grinding slowly against Roy's groin, it was easy, so easy to pretend that it was his lost young lover with him and not a distorted reflection. Exhausted as he was, Roy wanted the illusion. He needed the illusion.

"I remember ... a river," said Lust finally. "I went there ... looking for someone. The sun was dark and red in the sky, and he was sitting by the river. I said, 'Let's go,' and he came with me. I cared about him."

The memory was offered the way Lust always offered his fragments of memory - in a low tone, almost wistful as he dredged through the shattered remains of his personality - and Roy wrapped his arms around the thing's shoulders, held him close.

"Edward," he whispered. It had been such a horrible day.

"Mmmm." There was no discernable emotion in the homunculus' voice as he resumed stroking and licking Roy's skin.

Eventually Roy sat up on the edge of the cot and let Lust undress him, and then kneel before him. He didn't even have to close his eyes, really, to pretend that it was Edward's head between his legs ... the creature had Edward's shape, Edward's bright hair, and it was dark enough. Clever fingers teased the insides of his thighs as the homunculus took his erection down to the root, swallowing him eagerly, and made soft, needy noises whenever Roy wasn't halfway down his throat. Leaning back, half-sprawled across the cot, Roy bit down on his moans as that agile tongue worked the head and shaft of his cock, and his inhuman lover did things with his mouth that felt impossible. When he came, he came hard, and the world drifted for a moment; strong hands turned him sideways, laid him back down on the cot and drew the musty, rough blanket up to his chest.

"Edward," he murmured. "I loved you, I know I never told you, but you knew I loved you, didn't you?"

"Go to sleep," whispered Lust, and kissed his cheek beside his nose. The voice was Edward's, but the tone was smug, and self-satisfied.


	2. breath they had not, nor blood nor senses

"Settle down," said Roy, too quietly for anyone but Lust and the driver of the jeep to hear.

The vehicle moved at marching speed, following two more jeeps and a personnel carrier, and followed in kind by one of the armored divisions. To one side of the road, a couple squads of soldiers on foot jogged through the slushy, half-frozen mud, following their sergeants and advancing farther up the column. Although, to call this trace through the snow-covered forest a _road_ was being charitable; perhaps it had been yesterday, but bearing several hundred thousand men, women, and vehicles had been hard on it.

Earlier in the morning, Roy had heard the sounds of fighting near the head of the column, but by the time the reports had trickled back toward him, it had all been over. The Drachmen army was not, to all appearances, the source of the light resistance they'd encountered so far, but rather groups of guerillas. It was to be expected, but the face of one of the dead guerilla fighters remained with Roy, turned up toward the sky in the snow as Roy's jeep passed by, the front of his white-patchy camouflage jacket splattered with red. He'd looked so young.

"This is so exciting," said Lust, from his perch on the rear of the jeep. "Why didn't we do this sooner? This is such _fun!"_

Roy had a lot of words that he could use to describe this march toward the southernmost pass through the Briggs Mountains, but "fun" was a long way down that list. "Sit down," he said through his teeth, "and settle down."

Lust, as usual, ignored him, and jumped from the back of the jeep up onto the barrel of the cannon on the tank that followed them. The soldiers manning the tank were used to Lust by now, and did nothing but give him dirty looks. There was no wind, but it was bitterly cold, and the air smelled like mud and gasoline. Somewhere up ahead, a sharp crack of breaking wood carried through the cold air, followed by the crash of falling, as the engineers out in front of the column cut another tree to reinforce the road for the tanks that followed them. When another crack rang through the air, and then a third, Roy knew there was some kind of problem with the road ahead, and when the radio phone mounted in one of the jeeps in front of him rang, he knew it was a bad one.

The first lieutenant manning the radio phone came running back toward Roy a moment later. "Sir," he said, with a brief salute as he jogged along beside Roy's vehicle. "There's a culvert up ahead. They're bridging it now." Another sharp, distant cracking of a felled tree accompanied the words. Roy had sent the engineers far enough ahead of the column to, hopefully, be able to deal with any mines in the road or minor issues with the natural features of the area without having to slow down the column's advance, but when he heard yet another tree fall, his optimism in this respect was hard to maintain.

"Pass the word to the company commanders," he said. A place in the road where the army was forced by the lay of the land to halt for any length of time would be the perfect place to launch an ambush. Roy had to assume that the Drachmen knew their own land, and knew about this culvert. "Tell Colonel Davidson send out exploratory squads with flares to the north and south. The armors are to remain manned. The remainder of the company can rest while we're held up, but they are to keep their weapons in hand at all times."

"Yes, sir," said the lieutenant, and ran back to his own jeep to call the necessary people up and down the column.

Roy's jeep lurched as Lust jumped back onto it. "When are we going to start fighting?" he asked, and Roy more than half-expected the creature to start bouncing in excitement, but thankfully Lust refrained.

"Hopefully, never," said Roy. "Now come here, _sit down,_ and be quiet."

"Realistically," the homunculus insisted, remaining where he was. "When do you think we'll start fighting? I never get to see the fighting, you're always locked up in a building during the battles. I want to kill something, Colonel."

Reaching back, Roy grabbed for Lust's arm with the intent of physically dragging him down into the seat, but the Sin twitched back out of his reach and laughed derisively. It would have been undignified to chase him, so Roy didn't.

"What's the matter?" the thing taunted. "Arms too short? Not quick enough? Weather making you creaky in your old age?" The homunculus laughed again. Roy's driver shifted uncomfortably, but remained facing stiffly forward.

No matter how much comfort the creature could offer him sometimes - no matter how much he looked like Roy's dead lover - there were times when Roy would have happily strangled his companion. He actually had, once, but aside from making the mocking laughter stop for a little while, it hadn't had much effect.

Up ahead, the personnel carrier was slowing to a halt, and soon Roy's jeep and the tanks behind him were as well. The sound of trees being felled had stopped for a little while, but now Roy could hear them starting up again; he was closer now, and the buzz of chainsaws, far away, was just audible. Roy felt no particular need to send any messages up front; the engineers couldn't help but be aware of the potential danger the column was in while stopped dead, strung out like pearls along a road with the defensive capacity of a child's sandcastle.

Looking up into the forest around him, Lust _was_ bouncing slightly now, balanced in a crouch, his bare toes on the frozen metal on the back of the jeep, fingers extended into eight-inch black talons. "I want to kill something," the creature whispered again.

"People in hell want icewater," Roy told him. "Stay here."

"Eh?" Lust gave him a curious look as Roy swung out of the stopped jeep. Really, he just wanted to stretch his legs a little ... he wasn't really trying to evade the homunculus, which had proven impossible in the past anyway. He just wanted to walk a bit, although the snow-churned mud sucked at his boots and would have exhausted him before he got very far.

He never got far enough to even feel tired, or to be able to pretend that he was somehow _away_ from the homunculus for once. The shots sounded dreadfully loud in the quiet, snowbound forest on the other side of the road. Roy turned around just in time to see his driver slump down at the wheel and Lust jerk; then the tips of a pair of scissored black talons were inches from his chest with a small lump of silver metal caught on the broken tip of one. An instant later, the talons were gone.

It happened almost too quickly for Roy to process. Lust took the space between the jeep and Roy in an animal bound and knocked Roy down into the mud, and after that Roy couldn't see anything at all because Lust wouldn't let him up. Gunfire was erupting all around them, shouted orders, and then the deafening reverb of the armor firing into the trees. Shots pinged off of metal, thudded into the snow and mud, cracked off into the forest. Somewhere nearby, a soldier made the low, agonized sound of a mortal injury being suppressed as best as possible.

"Let me up," said Roy, cold wet mud soaking into the back of his coat, as he tried to shove Lust off of him so he could stand. The homunculus stood over him, body shielding much of his, and a taloned hand pressed hard against his chest to keep him down. The creature was _strong._ Red fluid dripped from Lust's broken claw for ten or fifteen seconds, and the drops sizzled like embers in the churned snow until the talon regenerated.

When the sound of combat subsided, at least nearby, Lust finally let Roy stand up and, furious, Roy punched the creature as his first action. Unimpressed, Lust just took the hit and grinned at him, and leaped up to resume his perch on the back of the jeep, scanning the woods around him. The mud didn't seem to stick to Lust's feet at all.

"What the hell is happening?" he demanded. In the scant minutes that had passed since Lust had knocked him down, the entire column had been thrown into disarray, and one of the tanks was actually half-off the road, still firing shells into the forest. "Stop that. Stop that! Where is Colonel Houghton?"

It took more effort than it should have to find the armored division commander and get the tanks to stop wasting their ammunition on an enemy that had effectively vanished between the trees; there were alchemists with the army, of course, and for some reason that made some of the soldiers think that they had access to an unlimited number of shells.

The first lieutenant from the communications jeep brushed the mud off the back of Roy's uniform while Roy listened to reports and gave orders through the scratchy radio phone mounted in the jeep. There was still some fighting going on toward the back of the column, but it was tapering off as the Drachmen escaped into the forest.

Roy debated sending what little cavalry he had into the forest after the attackers, but in the end decided not to. The snow was deep in places, and he didn't have many horses; the last thing he needed was to have one or more of them fracture a leg chasing a phantom enemy and leave him with even fewer horses. Some of the Drachmen that had attacked were dead. The rest were effectively gone once they got beyond a certain distance. Roy gave orders for no pursuit, and had the brigade commanders get their soldiers back on the road and back in order instead. They hopefully wouldn't be here much longer, and chasing guerillas would be both a waste of manpower, and probably also something the enemy expected him to do ... stringing out his forces even further would make it that much more difficult to get moving again. Above all else, Roy needed to remain mobile, and get into the foothills of the pass as quickly as possible.

By the time Roy had things halfway sorted-out, the call was coming in that the issue with the road through the culvert had been resolved, and the column was starting to move again. There was no time to bury the Amestrian dead; Roy's driver was stripped of his dog tags, weapon, and anything else useful, and abandoned by the side of the road with the others who had already breathed their last. The wounded were carted to the middle-rear of the column, where the medical trucks were.

Roy's new driver gave Lust the kind of look that a mouse generally gives a cat, but got in and started up the jeep anyway.

"Sir," said a soldier of unknown origin and a sergeant-major rank who abruptly appeared by the side of Roy's jeep just as they started to move again. She held a flat package wrapped in canvas toward him. "Major Havok asked me to give you these."

"Thank you," said Roy, taking the offered item, which, unwrapped, proved to be a half-dozen photographs. Roy turned them around, wondering what he was looking at, before recognizing in two a top-down view of a black line half-shrouded by trees, the winding, serpentine course of a creek, and a rise of land. They were aerial snapshots of what must be the surrounding territory. Havok must have taken advantage of the brief pause to send up a spy balloon. "Excellent. Tell the major this is good work."

"Yes, sir." The soldier saluted, and jogged off again farther forward.

Lust leaned forward to look at the photographs over Roy's shoulder as if interested in them, but when he spoke it was only to say mournfully, "I didn't get to kill anyone."

Roy had managed to put the Sin's presence out of his mind. Abruptly reminded, he turned around and gave the creature a murderous glare. "You," he said, the fury that had been put aside so that he could deal with the situation surging back. He leashed it with difficulty, and only because having an argument with his companion in hearing distance of his soldiers would have caused more rumors to spread. "You are never to do anything remotely like that again, is that clear? I have put up with a lot of bullshit from you, but when you put my ability to _command this army_ in jeopardy, I am through with you. I will take you out and have every soldier in this army put a round into you until you _finally die._ Do you understand me?"

The homunculus' cocky grin - _so much like Edward's that his heart ached_ \- didn't break for a second, and when Roy stopped speaking, Lust leaned forward and spit. Incensed, Roy was about to start dressing the impertinent thing down again, when Lust spit again, and this time the silver blob of metal, deformed by hot passage through flesh, landed in Roy's lap.

Lust spit out a total of six bullets. Then he resumed what he'd been doing before, just riding the back of the jeep with a secretive, knowing smile. Roy stared at the creature for a long time before he went back to the photographs.


	3. what do you ask of me? why tempt me?

Lust's breath was hot on his neck. Those slender, delicate hands, gloved in black, stroked down Roy's chest and belly, while Roy supported the homunculus' weight on his back. The creature wasn't very heavy; for all his terrifying strength, Lust weighed less than Edward had, because Lust wasn't carrying around automail.

"That's it," purred the homunculus in his ear. "That's the way, Colonel. Relax ..." Roy bit down on a soft cry of pleasure as another inch of the thing's cock pressed into him, and he spread his knees wider, arched his back, to accept more.

The gloves on Lust's fingers felt exactly like flesh as the creature toyed with him, played with his nipples, dipped lightly into his navel. Roy was having trouble maintaining his erection, for all that he was so aroused he could scream, as this inhuman, _inhuman_ monster penetrated him. There was no pain, really - Lust was far too skilled to hurt him without meaning to - but just thinking about what he was doing was putting him off his stride. It felt like Edward ... no mistake about it, Lust was carrying around Edward's cock ... but it _wasn't_ Edward. It was like fucking Edward's reanimated corpse or something.

"Shhhhh," whispered Lust, the fingers of one cool hand wrapping around Roy's balls, giving a firm tug to establish that the hold was solid. "I want you so bad, Colonel. Mmmm ... you feel so good, that's it. That's it."

"No," whispered Roy. "Say ... say ... say something like, 'I'm going to fuck you so hard, you'll be tasting my jizz for a week.'"

Lust laughed. His laugh was soft and throaty, but there was a mocking note behind it. "I'm not going to say something like _that,"_ he said, his cock three-quarters of the way inside Roy. "That's ridiculous."

Lowering his head slightly, Roy touched his forehead to his wrists. "You used to say things like that all the time," he said quietly. "Ridiculous things. I loved you for them."

"Mmmm." The tone of Lust's voice changed slightly, less dismissive now. "Did I? I don't remember anything like that."

"All the time," whispered Roy. "All the time."

The room moved, in yellow lamplight and smoky shadows, as the oil lamp on the dresser flickered. Lust had wanted to extinguish it, but Roy insisted that it be left burning low. The sheets under Roy were coarse, but clean and smooth, and much softer than any kind of military-issue bedding; they smelled like the cedar chips that Roy had found between the sheets and the blankets. The bed and dresser, and the bookshelves in the corner, were all of finished wood, crudely carved, probably handmade by the farming family that had been frightened out of their home by the approaching foreign army ... or perhaps their ancestors. Roy could almost feel the ghosts of generations in the inexpertly-painted mountainscapes and portraits, and the thickly-plastered walls upon which they were framed. The quilts on the bed would have been worth a fortune in Central; the rocking chair by the door would have been thrown away as the work of a carpenter's apprentice.

The ghost on Roy's back drifted his lips across Roy's shoulders, and tightened his hold on Roy's testicles, but said nothing. Roy filled the silence himself. "I know I laughed at you sometimes, Edward. I didn't mean it. I never meant it, and I'm sorry. I ... You frightened me sometimes. It frightened me to think that you might love me back."

"Now _you're_ saying ridiculous things," purred Lust, and the kisses deepened; Roy felt the nip of teeth and the wetness of tongue on the nape of his neck. Roy moaned as the homunculus pulled a little way out of him, and then forced his way slightly deeper, inexorably penetrating, long and slow. Once completely inside, Lust began to slowly fuck him, with a kind of rolling motion that moved the creature's cock with short, deep thrusts that never pulled very far out. All Roy was required to do was brace himself with his elbows on the bed and his knees as far apart as he could manage.

Warm breath on his back, lips between his shoulderblades; Edward had never been tall enough to fuck him and kiss him at the same time. Knees between his own, keeping his thighs apart so that his lover's pelvis could match his, could press groin against buttocks to deepen the intimacy. The slightly tacky pull of skin against skin. Fingers combing his pubic hair, playing with his nipples and testicles, accepting his sexuality as easily as the rest of him. Roy groaned softly into his arms, jerking his own hips like a rutting animal, or like a whore, wanting the homunculus' cock to go deep. Lust obliged.

He felt the creature turn his head to the side, lay a cheek on Roy's back, just before one of those cool hands wrapped around his erection. Roy's body bucked, thrusting forward hard into the hand, and he made a soft, sharp sound in his throat as those skilled fingers began to expertly manipulate his cock and foreskin to drive him closer to orgasm, but not into it. It wasn't often that they were able to have this kind of sex, and Lust enjoyed toying with Roy's body when it happened; this was no exception.

"Beg me, Colonel," whispered the thing into his back, and Roy whispered back, "No."

He would eventually, and he knew it. Lust's stamina was just as inhuman as the rest of him; he could fuck Roy almost into incoherence, and if necessary, Lust would hold him by the wrists to keep him from touching himself. In sex, as in no other part of Lust's personality, there was virtually no shadow remaining of his former self ... in this, the creature was entirely Sin. Roy both hated it, and couldn't possibly get enough of it.

"Beg, Colonel," murmured the homunculus again, as Roy's muscles loosened and quivered, on the brink of orgasm, before the creature let him back away from the edge once more.

"Stop it," said Roy, but the words were the weak, pathetic plea that he hadn't wanted to utter. He thrust into the hand on his cock, and groaned when Lust moved his hand with Roy's body, so that nothing was accomplished. The soft flickers of sensation along his cock, and the deep, rolling motion inside him as Lust continued to slowly fuck him, would drive Roy to begging anyway, and sooner rather than later. What was the point of trying to hold out? "Please," he whispered. "Please let me come."

With a self-satisfied purr, Lust rewarded him with two full strokes of his erection, and Roy came, biting his forearm to muffle the cry. He could feel Lust's body jerking in orgasm as well, as the homunculus fed upon Roy's pleasure; Roy didn't mind it, and never did. He collapsed to the mattress afterward, sinking into the wetness of his own semen with the weight of the homunculus still on his back, and the thing's hard cock still inside him.

Lust could go straight from orgasm and back into sex in seconds. Always wanting more, never satisfied.

After a few minutes, Roy nudged the homunculus off his back and rolled onto his side. Lust seemed inclined to remain on top of him, nudging him for permission to keep fucking him, but Roy pulled the creature onto the bed with him, tucking his arms around the small form. He couldn't even be angry with Lust for making him beg; it was the Sin's nature to be cruel, and not his fault.

Lust snuggled close, rubbing his face against Roy's chest. "More," he whispered.

"Later," murmured Roy. He should sleep now. The army surrounded the farmhouse, bivouacking in the fields and outbuildings, catching what rest they could before digging in a more permanent camp in the morning. They would stay here for a little while, near the mouth of the pass, resting from the forced march up from the border ... and maybe longer than that, depending on what Roy saw when the aerial maps of the region were completed. He wanted the pass, but it might not yet be feasible to just simply march in and take it.

They would have time, plenty of time, for more sex before it was time to leave this particular camp. Not enough to sate Lust - nothing could ever sate Lust - but enough to shred Roy a little more.

Despite knowing that he should sleep, Roy found himself stroking the loose golden hair of the creature in his arms. Lust was so small, so small and delicate, just as Edward had been, and just as with Edward the delicacy concealed a tremendous capacity to kill. He ran his fingers through the homunculus' thick hair, separated it into sections under his fingers, and began to braid it.

"What are you doing?" asked Lust, with amusement in his tone.

"Shhhh." When he had wound the braid together, there was nothing to use to tie it, so he just turned Lust onto his back on the bed and pulled the braid over the creature's shoulder so he could see it. The grin that Lust gave him was mesmerizing, and wicked.

In bright light, Lust's muddy eyes, his hands irrevocably gloved up to the elbow, the ouroborus on his abdomen, all the things that formed the wall separating him from Edward Elric were so glaring, so painfully _there._ In darkness, Roy could not escape the wiry lightness of the body, unencumbered by automail, or the coolness of the creature's skin; forced to rely entirely upon touch, the differences in the way the homunculus felt and moved could not be escaped either.

But in this dim half-light, dusked by the flickering lamplight, Roy could see it more easily. In the shape of the face, the body. The smell, the texture of the skin. "Edward," he whispered.

"Yes," said Lust, and closed his eyes. A human lover would be offended, at best, at being used as a substitute for another. Lust just placed his black hands behind the small of his back to conceal them.

Roy could have broken in half. He lowered his lips to his lover's chest, kissed, and rubbed his cheek against that smooth skin, and if he were sobbing a little, there was no one to know but the two of them. "I miss you so much," he whispered, tightness in his chest.

"I'm here."

"I'm sorry. I'm _sorry._ I wanted to tell you how much I loved you. It seemed like there was so much ... so much time. I had years. You were so young, Edward. I didn't want it to be just sex and nothing else, but ..."

"It's okay." A delicate hand landed on the back of Roy's head, and he turned a little into the touch as his lover brushed fingers through his hair. "It's okay, you didn't know."

Absolution. Edward's voice. "I wasted all that time ... you hated me."

"I couldn't have hated you."

"You did. You did. You would say ... ridiculous things, such stupid things, such _childish_ things, and I laughed at you but secretly I loved you and I loved all the childish things you did. I wanted to tell you, I wanted you to know that you were loved, that I didn't really think you were laughable, but I didn't say it, and I'm sorry ..." His throat closed. His chest ached.

"Shhhh." The other hand joined the first, going around Roy's shoulders as he pressed his face to his lover's narrow chest to press away the sting in his eyes. "You didn't know. You couldn't have known."

"That doesn't make it okay."

He wrapped his arms around the homunculus' waist and looked up toward the creature's face; eyes still closed, it was _Edward,_ Edward under his cheek, in his embrace. It was Edward's soft lips, Edward's sharp jawline, and the angled sweep of golden eyebrow was Edward's as well. Roy shifted a bit, unfolded himself to lay more closely to his lover's body, and kissed those lips, those eyebrows. Lust tilted up his chin, lipping blindly for Roy's mouth. "I cherished you so much," Roy told him, "but I never let you know."

"It's all right. I know now." And Roy choked a little again, and pressed his mouth to Edward's, ran his hand down Edward's belly and around Edward's waist once more to pull him closer. His lover responded eagerly, pressing his lithe body to Roy's and opening his mouth for Roy's tongue, and only the slightly metallic, almost oily taste of the homunculus' mouth spoiled the illusion.

Thin, soft fingers stroked Roy's back, soothing, forgiving, down his hips and thighs, then up again to his chest, down to his groin. He moaned softly into that ardent mouth as his cock was gently teased to harden once more, and he shifted to straddle the slender body of his lover, thighs spread to allow for more contact. This touch knew him, confidently moved over his fresh erection to handle him exactly the way that could make him shiver with desire.

"Edward," he groaned.

"No more," whispered the mouth against his. "Don't hurt yourself anymore. It's _all right._ Let me make you feel good again."

He remained on his hands and knees while Lust slithered down the ruffled sheets between his legs, kissing down his chest and belly to take his erection in hand, and then in mouth. This was how Lust liked him best, kneeling down with his elbows on the mattress, for reasons Roy did not comprehend. Edward had always preferred Roy on his back, another way in which Lust differed from his template in sex.

With no particular need to breathe, Lust could take Roy deep into his throat, and didn't mind if Roy thrust and fucked his mouth. Arms went around Roy's thighs to hold him as Lust threw all of his considerable talents into milking Roy's cock. Wet tongue, warm throat, hard suction ... having just come, it took Roy a long time to come again, groaning and helpless to the thing latched between his legs, but Lust's patience was infinite. Head down, Roy moaned Edward's name when he did finally come, and Lust seemed more pleased than anything else.

"I'd stay like that all the time if I could," said Lust once Roy was laying on his side again, sweating and panting for breath.

"I imagine Colonel Hobbs would have something to say about that," murmured Roy, drowsily.

Lust laughed, softly, musically. "I bet he'll have something to say just about the fact that I slept in here with you tonight behind a locked door. Let's give him something to really complain about. Let me blow you tomorrow during one of your boring meetings."

A moment before, Roy would have said he was too tired to laugh with his homunculus lover. He would have been wrong.

"I'm serious," said Lust. He didn't sound the least bit weary; the creature had never slept at all, to the best of Roy's knowledge, and possibly never needed to. "I'll crawl under the table and settle between your legs, and just start using my mouth on you while you're talking about dull things like tanks and latrines. Nobody has to know what I'm doing."

"I'm pretty sure they'd know what you were doing if you disappeared under the table," murmured Roy. When Lust squirmed like a held cat and drew in a breath to continue, Roy said, "Be quiet now. I'm really tired."

"I wore you out." Smug.

"Yes. Hush now."

Roy was close to sleep, and barely aware of it when Lust wiggled free of his tight embrace and moved off the bed.

* * *

Waking was a struggle, dragging himself up from the depths of unconsciousness as if clawing toward the surface of the earth. The sounds being repeated in his ear took a long time to resolve into words, and even after Roy was sitting up and looking around, he wasn't quite aware of his surroundings.

"General," said Hawkeye once more. "Wake up. Call for you from Central, General. Wake up, sir. General Mustang."

She was shaking him gently, and he touched her wrist to get her to stop. He felt drunk, brought up out of a dead sleep so suddenly; the window was still dark, so why was he awake? The bed was empty. "Lust," he said, and slurred a bit.

"Over there, sir. There's a call for you from Central. Please get up, sir, and come take it."

Central. Central. Fuck. Coherency was returning fast, but the weight of his body's desire to sleep was dragging on all his limbs, and cottoning around his mind. "Uniform," he said.

It was Lust who offered it to him, with a glint in his eye which was entirely too smug. Hawkeye, satisfied that Roy was reasonably conscious, let herself out so he could dress.

"You look tired," Lust noted as Roy folded himself into his uniform. The material felt scratchy, dirty and uncomfortable on his skin.

"That's because I am."

"You should get more sleep."

Roy shot the Sin a glare. Lust was leaning against one of the posts at the foot of the bed, relaxed and ready, not hindered in the least by his own lack of sleep. "Stop looking so damned awake," Roy muttered.

The thing stretched, lithe and catlike, bending backwards over the footboard of the bed. He was dressed at least, in what passed for clothing in the Sin's view anyway, and the scraps of black cloth clung to his slender body as he displayed himself for Roy. "Can we come back to bed when you're done and fuck again?"

"No." Roy should have told him that last night. Damn him for being so easily persuaded. If he'd gone straight to sleep instead of indulging in his carnal desires with his always-ready companion, he would have gotten a whole lot more rest and wouldn't be feeling like his brain had been left out to soak.

After stamping his feet into his boots, Roy walked toward the door. Central. No doubt wanting an update on Roy's execution of the war. As little as Roy enjoyed waging war, he liked having to justify his decisions to Central even less.

And on what was, checking his watch, about two hours of sleep. Fuck.

Light fingers landed on his shoulder as he reached for the doorknob. Roy brushed Lust's hand roughly away, and angrily opened the door.


	4. well, would you know more?

The prisoners were brought out in groups of five so that Roy could review them. Forced to kneel, wrists bound, inadequately dressed for the cold since their coats had been taken from them, and superbly dirty, they all pretty much looked alike. Some of them were masked in dried blood, the ones who had fought and had to be subdued. Some of them were obviously disliked by their guards, given an extra kick to make them go down on their knees for the commander of the army that had captured them. Some were still in pain from their interrogation, favoring an arm or shoulder which had been broken in the process.

Lust shadowed Roy like a faithful dog, claws extended, sometimes whispering to Roy for permission to kill one of the prisoners. Requests that were always denied. The prisoners rarely looked upon Lust with anything but disgust; everyone in the camp knew about the General's pet abomination, even those who walked behind the army in chains.

After looking over each batch in the cold, windy afternoon outside the makeshift brig, Roy waved the guards to take their charges back inside. Once they'd all been presented to him, he turned to Havok and asked quietly, "Which one, do you think?"

Taking a drag off his cigarette, Havok said, "There could be more than one, you know."

"I know. But there has to be at least one, and I don't see _any_ that look to be worth the effort of an exchange. We'll need to look at the details of the way each was captured."

"Mmm." The look Havok gave him over the cigarette was skeptical. "This late in the game? We can try to see if anyone remembers which was which. I mean, nobody bothered to check for their names and ranks until they were processed back in base camp. You're thinking one of them might have switched jackets and tags with a dead companion to make himself look less important?"

"Something like that." Roy started to walk away from the brig, and Havok walked beside him. Lust trailed behind. "I know it's unlikely, but it's not impossible."

"No. Not impossible." The cigarette was tossed to the ground and stubbed out under Havok's boot; the fact that he did not immediately light another was telling. The supply trucks were almost a week late, held up by snow, and Havok's stash of cigarettes was the mine shaft canary of the camp's supplies.

"Someone might remember," said Roy. "At least we can ask."

"We should also check out the people they're offering to exchange," said Havok. "It might give us some kind of idea of how badly they want this whoever back."

Roy scoffed, and turned to skirt the medical tent. "Probably a bunch of farmers from the border, maybe some soldiers. I can't imagine they have anyone valuable enough to give us an accurate idea."

Havok just shrugged. "Can't hurt. It isn't as if anyone can attack you if you go yourself."

"Mmmm." It would look good for the soldiers, as well, give them the impression that they could potentially be reacquired if they were captured by the enemy. Under no circumstances could Roy actually give the Drachmen what they wanted, but making both the Drachmen and his own soldiers think that he was considering it could be beneficial. "Make arrangements."

"Yes, sir." Havok offered him a lazy salute and turned around, making his way back toward intelligence territory.

"I never get to kill anyone," pouted Lust, once Havok was gone.

"It's just so tough to be you, I know," said Roy. He had a meeting with the engineers soon, but after checking his watch, he decided he had enough time for a cup of coffee and a bite of lunch. I wasn't as if the meeting would start without him if he was a tiny bit late.

"Let's go back to the house," purred Lust, and Roy turned around and swatted at him. "What?"

"Be quiet." This camp was laid out a lot better than the army's last one, as the farm that Roy had commandeered was pretty big, and a large percentage of it was flat already. Some ditches and palisades had been constructed on the outskirts of the camp, but there had been no earth-moving alchemy required to even out the land. To the north and west the Briggs Mountains rose, gray and white, their peaks shrouded in the cloud that overcast the sky; nearby to the east was the narrow dent of land that betrayed the beginning of the pass that Roy wanted to control. All around him, the Amestrian soldiers seemed quiet, almost intimidated. They greeted him cheerfully enough as he walked between the tents, and passed them where they huddled around campfires bundled up in blankets, but behind him the silence resumed.

A light snow began to fall.

* * *

Roy brought the photographic montage of the pass into his bedroom for the evening, along with a huge map that one of the women from Intelligence had drawn. Lust settled immediately on the bed, belly-down, as soon as the door was closed and began to slide out of the scraps that he claimed were clothing. Ignoring him, Roy spread out the map on the hardwood floor.

"You work too much," said Lust, rolling over onto his back once he was bare except for the gloves, which did not seem to come off at all, and the skintight black bits that did nothing to actually cover his feet. Fingers trailed enticingly over his belly and ouroborus. "Come to bed, let me fuck you."

"This is for you, too," said Roy, spreading the photographs next to the appropriate spots on the map. The pass through the mountain range was over sixty miles in length, twisted and uneven, running north-south on both ends but turning around so much that it was almost east-west for part of the middle portions. The Amestrian army was camped within sight of the southern end of the pass, but there was a town at the northern end, and it was a safe bet that part of the Drachmen army was occupying it.

They may also have sabotaged parts of the pass itself. Roy had sent a couple of the engineers, well-escorted, to scout out that possibility.

Lust moved around behind Roy and leaned against him, arms around Roy's neck. "How is it for me, Colonel? It's a map."

"Here. Or here." Roy pointed to places where the pass widened slightly, as it turned west, and then back north again around the bases of mountains. "We could draw the array in either of these spots." He could feel Lust's erection as the homunculus rubbed it against his back through his uniform. Passing a photograph of one of the points back to his companion, he said, "I think I know which one of the alchemists we can use, too."

Delicate black fingers dropped the photo back onto the map. "That one's no good." Although the hardness of the thing's cock was still stroking slowly up Roy's back, the note of lazy seduction had dropped out of Lust's voice. It ached when the homunculus sounded like that: thoughtful, intelligent. "The shape is all wrong. We'd have to draw the array far too small to get it to fit in. Do you have a picture of this other one?" Lust pointed, and the pointing finger extended to tap sharply on the other turn.

"Not yet. We should have one tomorrow when I go take a look at the prisoners the Drachmen want to exchange for ours. I agree with you about the shape, though, and the other one doesn't seem to have that kind of outcropping in it."

The needle-sharp tip of Lust's finger moved from the turn in the pass to the area just east of it, toward the Amestrian end. "We should look at this area, too. The best way to get them to bunch up on the array would be to cause a rockfall here."

"No. Not a rockfall. We'll need to use the pass ourselves, not destroy it." Like it or not, the feel of Lust's slender body pressed against his, and the promise of the creature's erection against his back, was beginning to affect Roy. Given even the slightest hint of permission, Lust would turn him over the edge of the bed and fuck him for an hour, or take him right here on the floor, amid the photographs. Just the fact that Lust desired him _so much_ was tempting, even without the implicit promise of the hardness against his skin.

"An avalanche then," said Lust, tapping his extended finger against the map. "Easier to clean up with just a little alchemy to heat the snow. You said you knew which alchemist too?"

Taking Lust's wrist, Roy twisted around and drew the creature to straddle his lap. Golden hair spilled over his hand as he stroked his companion's head, but the eyes were wrong ... wrong, dark, the pure gold adulterated with the color of sin. "Yes," he said, voice lowering somewhat, and he let his hands run down the homunculus' body. "You remember that red-haired fellow from lunch?" Lust was bad with names, rarely remembering them and only occasionally granting names of his own for people to use, so Roy didn't bother trying to name the man.

"Yes." Hands on Roy's shoulders, Lust tilted back, displaying himself for view and touch. Roy took the hands off his shoulders and pushed Lust back even more, until the creature was laying on the floor and accessible for Roy's tongue.

"He's ambitious," Roy murmured, around his lover's nipple. The homunculus' skin tasted just like Edward's had. "He thinks he's very skilled. You've seen how he looks at you."

"Yes."

"I'll have to tell him what he's really doing, but he will if he thinks it will give him a chance to create his own homunculus."

Lust laughed, and it was the deep, sensual laugh that he used when he expected sex in his immediate future. The purring tone was back in his voice now, which was a relief; Roy sometimes couldn't bear it when the thing resembled Edward too closely. "I want to fuck you," Lust whispered, arms around Roy's neck and fingers twining in his hair. "My alchemist."

"What if I want to fuck _you?"_ asked Roy, moving from Lust's nipple to his throat. The creature under him was soft and yielding, willing and irresistible, and writhed in just the right way to invite Roy to use that body for his own pleasure. But the laugh he got in response was scorning.

"As if you'd enjoy that."

"I might." However, when Lust began to take the initiative, rolling Roy onto his back and starting to take off the uniform that separated him from his prey, Roy didn't fight the Sin. And he knew he'd go on his hands and knees, right there next to the map, his hands amid the aerial photos, when asked.

When Lust moved to extinguish the oil lamp, Roy didn't object to that either.

* * *

Getting Lust into a uniform had been pretty difficult; anything that concealed the ouroborus ran hard up against whatever mental block the homunculus had about covering it.

Getting Lust to sit down in the back of the jeep for the drive through the pass was all but impossible. In the end, Roy had the creature tied down.

"I hate this! I hate this!" Lust couldn't really fight the bindings effectively, because his wrists had been tied crossing each other, and held up so that he couldn't reach any of the ropes with his talons. "Let me go! What if someone shoots at you? What am I going to do?"

"Sit there and watch me get shot, just like everyone else," said Roy mildly. He wished he could have left the homunculus in camp, but no amount of tying-down would have stopped Lust from following him; he'd tried it once before, and the thing became frightfully strong when he got frantic. Short of burying him in the rock, there was just no good way to hold him. At least sitting beside Roy, Lust was reasonably calm and wasn't struggling as hard as he could have been.

"That's unacceptable! Unacceptable!" When the jeep's driver failed to refrain from laughing quietly, Lust snarled, "Shut up! I'll carve your heart out if you don't shut up!"

Roy laid a hand on the homunculus' crossed wrists to settle him a little, and then flipped out a pair of sunglasses to cover the Sin's eyes.

"What's this?" Lust shook his head, and then leaned down to get the glasses near his fingertips so he could take them off.

"Stop that. Leave them on."

"Why? I can't _see!"_

"You'll get used to it." Roy stroked the creature's bound hands comfortingly, avoiding the deadly tips of his extended talons with care as the jeep swung around one of the foothills to enter the pass. "You need to keep those on if you don't want everyone who looks at you to know there's something wrong about you."

"I don't care what everyone knows! I need to be able to see!" The look Lust gave to Roy was imploring, and Roy offered his companion a reassuring smile.

"You'll get used to it. I promise."

The pass through the mountains was relatively snow-free, having been protected so far by the looming peaks themselves, but Roy felt that it would probably become impassable with the first heavy storms. It was fifteen miles in to the neutral territory where the Drachmen were bringing their prisoners: the first turn of the pass that Roy and Lust had judged to be too small and irregular for their purposes. It was a relatively silent trip, aside from Lust's fretting ... the weight of the mountains was intimidating, and nobody seemed much inclined to conversation. Hawkeye was in the jeep ahead of Roy's, with two of her lieutenants, and there were four guards in the jeep that followed. Even all of them put together could not protect Roy as well as Lust, but Lust's normal behavior and attire could not be tolerated.

The trip was very ... vertical. Roy hadn't realized from the photos and maps that the pass was so rugged. Some effort had been made the smooth the way, and Roy was pretty sure that alchemy had been involved, but there was only so much one could do without jeopardizing the stability of the rock walls that soared up on either side. The jeeps had no problem taking the slopes, but it was a bouncy ride, and stones clattered off behind them, skittering down toward more level ground.

The Drachmen were being very accommodating with this agreement, bringing their prisoners here to be reviewed. Roy stared off toward the passing scenery, the stark, almost dead beauty of rock and snow, and wondered _why._ Someone that Roy had in custody, someone they wanted back very, very much. Who could the important one be? None of the soldiers who had captured the men (and Drachmen soldiers were always men, for reasons unclear to Roy) remembered taking their captives in the company of, for instance, a dead general, but the lack of memory signified nothing.

It was a puzzle, of the kind that Roy liked least. Perhaps they thought to capture Roy, not realizing how well he was guarded, but with Lust beside him, Roy was as safe as if he were at home in his own bed.

"I hate this," said Lust eventually.

"If I thought that you'd remain sitting down, I'd let you go," said Roy quietly. "But I'm pretty sure that if I do that, you'll jump up onto the back of the jeep instead."

"I can't _protect you_ like this!" Lust pulled at the ropes, which lashed him in a complex web between his seat and the seat in front of him. "I need to be able to move!"

"Sometimes there's a greater need to look like a human being, Lust. Human beings don't ride on the backs of jeeps, and they don't wear next to nothing in this kind of weather, and they don't have eyes like yours. You have to look like a normal human, just another of my guards. That means you keep your uniform on, your hands in gloves, you wear the glasses, and you stay seated in the jeep."

"But I can't ..."

"Lust." Roy turned around to face his companion. They were almost there. "Pretend to be a human being. How can you seriously tell me that you want to be human if you can't behave like one for one day?"

"But ..."

"No buts. In about ten minutes, I'm going to let you loose. You're going to _stay seated,_ do you hear me? This is very important, and you can't run around acting like an animal here. You can go back to doing whatever you want when we get back to camp, but just for now, pretend to be a human being."

Lust glared at him, but didn't argue. He said only, "I hate this," once more, and when Roy untied him as promised, Lust remained seated.

The slender road through the pass widened a bit, and then began to bear toward the west, opening up into the first mountain meadow. It really _wasn't_ anywhere near big enough for the array, only half a mile or so wide, and a lot of that was bitten into by an abrupt spur of the mountain to the north, slamming down out of the mountain and into the earth like a grey granite fist. The Drachmen had set up their own vehicles in the shadow of this spur, armed guards standing around a personnel truck. Lust hissed upon seeing them, and flexed his hands.

When Roy eyed him, Lust said, "What?"

"Gloves," said Roy. And when Lust opened his mouth to object, Roy said only, "Lust. Human."

Lust slid his hands into the white regulation gloves without further argument.

Roy's driver stopped a long way back from the Drachmen contingent, while Hawkeye's jeep continued forward to check the conditions of the situation before Roy approached. She got out of her jeep and spoke to the Drachmen; there was a lot of gesturing, since the Drachman language was not identical to Amestrian, only similar. It alarmed Roy slightly to have her out there by herself with just her lieutenants, with the enemy, but she had insisted and, in the end, Roy had to agree that her way was the best way.

Check the situation before Roy was brought within the range of danger. Check the prisoners, make sure they were really Amestrian. Make sure the Drachmen were, as far as could be ascertained, on the up-and-up. Dangerous for her, but wise.

A few minutes later, after a brief survey of the inside of the personnel truck, Hawkeye gestured toward Roy, giving him the okay to come forward himself.

Figures that Roy could only presume were the prisoners being offered for trade were unloaded from the truck as he got out of his jeep and walked toward the enemy representatives. The guards from the other jeep hurried to flank him, and Lust ...

... had stopped dead about four paces from the jeep, letting Roy continue on alone.

When Roy realized that his companion had stopped, he turned around incredulously and gave Lust a come-here gesture, but Lust only fidgeted and actually took a step _backward._ There was no time to question the homunculus' behavior; Roy could not allow the Drachmen to think that there was anything out of the ordinary about Lust. So he left the Sin where he was, next to the jeep as if guarding the vehicle, and walked forward to meet the Drachmen. Armed human guards, and his gloves ... he had them both.

For seven years, Lust had never been more than a few yards away, following him everywhere, watching him do everything, refusing to be either persuaded to leave or driven off. That the homunculus would abandon him _now_ was disquieting.

Hawkeye made the introductions, and had to be corrected on her pronunciation of one of the Drachman names. The men were small and bearded, like most Drachmen, and smiled cheerfully as they bowed to "great commander Mustang," as one said in broken Amestrian. Roy bowed back, in the Drachman custom, and nodded and smiled as Hawkeye attempted to communicate further, but Roy's smile concealed his growing apprehension. The Drachmen wanted something out of this ... perhaps it wasn't the return of an important figure that Roy had unknowingly captured. Perhaps, simply by coming to this meadow, Roy had walked into some kind of a trap. He found himself glancing around, taking in the meadow casually, as he looked for any telltale signs that a Drachman alchemist had tampered with the area.

He wished frantically that he knew what was affecting Lust.

"This way, sir," said Hawkeye, lightly touching his elbow, and Roy snapped his attention back to the Drachmen, who were bowing to him once more. Roy returned the bow, and then followed Hawkeye to the lines of Amestrian prisoners.

He had to at least go through the motions, and give no sign of his alarm.

As expected, most of the prisoners that the Drachmen wanted to exchange were soldiers, still dressed in tattered blue. There were no farmers as far as Roy could see, but there were a couple who were clearly Amestrian and yet not in uniform; it wasn't immediately apparent just where they had come from. Perhaps second-generation expatriates, born from parents who had relocated to Drachma when relations between the nations had been more peaceful? One of them seemed to be a child, which annoyed the hell out of Roy. Trying to guilt him into making a trade that he couldn't possibly agree to make by holding an Amestrian _child_ prisoner?

He went down the line, saying reassuring things to his captured soldiers, and then walked toward the child. Teenager, really, no taller than Roy's shoulder and obviously of at least Amestrian descent; no Drachman would have hair that pale. He opened his mouth to say something, and then froze.

It was Lust scowling up at him.

Except that Lust was ...

... and the eyes were ...

"It figures," said Edward, angrily. "If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all. So when are you going to take me home, you bastard?"


	5. silence of the kith and kin of Heimdal

Roy watched him approach the farmhouse, brilliant blond hair topping a body wrapped up in unfamiliar drab brown, moving like a beacon through the crowd of uniformed men and women. From the loft window, Edward was impossible to miss.

With the latest Intelligence briefing over, Roy should have been out checking the status of the supply shipment, which was now almost ten days late. Once the winter storms really began in earnest, Roy feared the army would starve to death, and it was probable the Drachmen knew that. If just one moderate snowfall could wreak such damage on the supply line, a real storm was going to be the death of them all.

The Drachmen didn't need to attack. They could just wait for the Amestrian army to freeze and starve to death on the flanks of the Briggs Mountains.

Instead of checking on the shipments, though, Roy stood in the window and watched Edward move determinedly toward the farmhouse, and then force his way past the guards and inside. Roy had already told them to let him in, if he came.

"That's really the boss, isn't it?" said Havok from the table.

"Yes," said Roy. Lust scratched his talons against the wall, but said nothing.

There was no further comment from Havok. Roy knew the man well enough to know everything Havok wanted to say, and Havok knew Roy well enough to know that Roy knew. _Where has he been? You have a homunculus of him standing next to you, doesn't that mean he was dead? What does this mean for Lust?_ Roy had no answers for those things.

_You can't let this affect your command._

Eventually, Roy brushed his fingers across the window, and moved away from it. Lust followed him down the loft stairs, and through the house.

It would have been impossible to stay away.

"You're going to see him, aren't you?" asked Lust. The Sin's voice was low, the tone slightly curious.

"I have to."

Edward was not in the kitchen, and the command staff cook had not seen him. That surprised Roy, as he would have thought that, freshly freed from captivity, his once-lover would have made straight for the nearest food.

His second guess was the bathroom, and he found the door closed. "Edward?" he called, knocking lightly on the door.

"What?" came the reply, slightly muffled.

"Can I come in?"

A pause, a splash of water, and then a somewhat lower response. "Nothing to stop you."

The door was unlocked, and Roy twisted the knob to open it. Lust shrank back beside the door, unwilling to enter, and for the second time in three-quarters of a decade, Roy went on alone.

Edward was sprawled out in the bathtub, head tilted back over the edge with his wet, unbound hair spilling all the way to the floor. His automail arm and leg were thrown over the edge to keep them out of the water, but the rest of him was as completely submerged as possible. "What do you want?" he asked, without opening his eyes. His nondescript brown clothes were strewn everywhere all over the floor, and his expression was blissful.

"Edward," said Roy, with so many things he wanted to say, wanted to ask, that he was having trouble on deciding where to start. Edward looked older ... shockingly older. Lust, perpetually frozen at the physical age of sixteen, had not prepared him at all to meet this weathered young man with lines at the corners of his eyes, waist-length hair, and roughly-cropped blond stubble peeking around the edges of his jaw.

"Yeah," said Edward, after a long pause and without opening his eyes. "That's still my name. You just enjoying the view, or was there something you wanted to say to me?"

"... how?"

"How what?" Edward turned his head then and looked at Roy. The gold of his eyes was the same: clear, piercing. "How did I get myself fucked by the Drachman army? Or how did I manage to get to Drachma in the first place? Those are both really good questions, and I have good answers for them, but they're going to last a lot longer than this bath. I have a better 'how' for you ... _how_ did you make that thing behind you?"

"We thought you were dead," whispered Roy. "We all thought you were dead."

"I see." Edward sat up slightly and picked up the wash cloth and a bar of soap, and started to scrub his thighs. "Excuse me, but I was trying to bathe here. I haven't had a bath in what feels like about a year, so if you're going to stand in here and gape over me, you're going to have to watch me wash too."

Roy sat down on the stool in front of the dressing table. "What happened to you?" he asked. "Where were you? Why didn't you contact us?" His lover. His lover, alive enough to grouse. Older, matured, and still no taller than his shoulder.

"I would have if I could have. Look, I already told you that was a long story. I could write a fucking book about it, and you probably wouldn't believe half of it. The half that you _will_ believe involves me getting stuck in Drachma for the last three years and not being able to contact you because of, you know, this _motherloving war_ that you and the rocket scientists down in Central cooked up."

Roy blinked. The what? "I didn't cook anything up, Edward. I'm just ..."

"Yeah, yeah, just following orders, fuck, does that line ever get old. Whatever." Edward vigorously scrubbed his good leg and foot, and then ran the washcloth up over his chest. "I can see why they promoted you. What ever happened to Colonel I-will-never-follow-unjust-orders-again?"

This wasn't the way it was supposed to be going. Were he to be honest with himself, Roy would have to admit to having no idea what he had expected, but this certainly wasn't it. Where was all this hostility coming from? His reunion with his once-lover was supposed to be a happy one, bittersweet at worst, but Edward had been verbally violent with him from the moment the younger man had recognized him in the mountain meadow, and had only gotten worse from there.

"Is this about Lust?" asked Roy. Lust's existence couldn't account for all of it; Edward had seemed irritated to see him before ever spotting Lust. But the homunculus with Edward's face definitely hadn't helped matters.

"Why the fuck would this be about that thing?" Edward went for more soap before attacking his neck and good arm with the cloth. A scrim of grimy froth was forming on the surface of the water. "Unless you're going to try to say it's responsible for gathering a huge army together and invading Drachma. Actually ... I wouldn't put that past it." The washcloth disappeared under the murky water as Edward scrubbed submerged parts of himself.

"The situation here is a difficult one, Edward," Roy told him. Behind him, Lust made a little scratching noise on the door frame. "But you know, I don't want to argue politics with you. I don't want to argue with you at all."

"Great. So get the hell out and let me clean myself off."

All of Roy's desires, the ones he had spilled out to Lust so many times, all his regrets, everything he'd wanted to tell Edward ... How could he say such things to the face of this anger? "Were you treated well?" he asked eventually. "By the Drachmen I mean."

"Mmmm." Edward, apparently finished with the washcloth, dropped it with a wet _thop_ on the floor and settled down into the water once more. The thin, soapy froth on the surface was disgusting - Edward really had been filthy - but Edward didn't seem to notice ... or if he did, he didn't care. "I guess. I was kidding about getting fucked by the army. They were pretty nice, I suppose, considering that they had decided that I was an Amestrian spy. By the way, I notice that Lieutenant ... uh, Colonel Hawkeye speaks really lousy Draekin. Take a real translator next time. She came close to calling them all goatfuckers on accident. I'm surprised they didn't get offended."

"All the intelligence people were busy on other things," said Roy.

Edward made a disgruntled sort of sound and just lay there in the warm, dirty water with his eyes closed. He looked slightly more like himself with the grime off, more like the boy that he had once been, that Roy had loved. He sat quietly and looked at his hands.

"I hate you sometimes," said Edward eventually.

Roy glanced up at him. Without opening his eyes, Edward made a vague gesture with his good hand and said, "I wish you'd fucking argue with me. I want to beat the shit out of you for what you did."

"What did I do?"

"What do you mean, what did you do? I was _fourteen,_ you son of a bitch."

Blinking, Roy sat up and said, "What? Edward ..."

"Don't give me any of your damned excuses."

"Edward ... you _wanted_ that."

"I was _fourteen,"_ said Edward again. The water sloshed, slopping out of the tub and onto the floor as the other man turned around to face him. Scowl at him. "I'm not even as old now as you were when you first fucked me, you sick bastard. Did you have no sense of decency?"

That was it. Roy didn't want to argue with Edward. He didn't want to fight with Edward. He'd loved Edward, he still loved Edward, but this was going too far. "You wanted that," he repeated. "You're not going to come back now, almost twelve years after the fact, and cry rape at me."

"I was fourteen," said Edward, yet again.

"Yes you were, and you wanted it. You came to _my_ house and begged me to ..."

"I never begged you. Don't make shit up."

"Asked me then."

"I was a kid. You were the adult, _you_ were supposed to be the responsible one and keep me from doing shit like that. You weren't supposed to take advantage of me."

Roy stared at him. He opened his mouth, and then stared a little more before saying, "I never took advantage of you!" There was no way he was going to point out that, except for that first time, _he'd_ always been the one on his back, so that Edward could take what he wanted, at his own pace. He'd never say that, not where people could, conceivably, be listening. Bad enough that this conversation was taking place at all.

"You made me want you. You manipulated me, and you didn't say no when you should have."

In fact, this had gone way too far as it was. Roy stood up. "I'm not going to take responsibility for this, Fullmetal. You calm down a little, and then maybe we'll talk more later. I'm sorry for interrupting your bath."

"I'm not done yet, you bastard. You sit back down."

There was a soft scratching sound from the door - Lust's claws on the doorframe. Edward gave the doorway a glare, and then abruptly stood up, shedding water down his body. Roy glanced away by reflex.

"Hand me a towel," Edward demanded, and Roy, despite his wish for a tactical retreat, complied.

Water went everywhere as Edward stepped out of the tub and dripped across the rough concrete floor as he dried himself off. It was difficult not to watch him do it; Roy kept his eyes averted, and tried not to concentrate on the flash of curled blond hair as Edward wrapped the towel around his narrow hips. "Care to start explaining _that?"_

"There isn't much to explain. Lust is ... what you see. Everyone thought you were dead, Edward."

Edward began to gather his clothes together into a pile on the floor. "So that gives you the right to create a fucked-up duplicate of me? I'd ask you what the hell you were thinking, but it seems pretty obvious from the fact that you named it _Lust._ You're fucking the thing, aren't you? You're sick. You're fucking a thing that not only looks like me, it looks like a teenaged version of me."

Edward lowered his voice then, whispered something under his breath, and then clapped his hands together and laid them on the pile of clothing. Blue sparks of light arced up from his fingers, and down through the cloth, throwing out a fine dust of grime into a circle on the concrete. Lust made an indistinguishable noise from the doorway, and Edward shot the thing a murderous glare.

"This isn't going to get us anywhere," said Roy. "I'll let you finish getting cleaned up."

"No," said Edward, as he started to pull on his clothes. "I want to hear your justification for that thing."

Irritated now beyond measure, Roy snapped, "I don't have to _justify_ Lust to you, Edward. Get this through your head. Everyone thought you were dead. _Everyone._ I'm not going to try to say that attempting to resurrect you would have been the right thing to do even if you _had_ been dead, but Lust didn't ask to be born any more than you did, and now he's here."

Yanking up his pants, Edward said venomously, "So what did you give up when you made it? Your balls or your brain?"

 _Edward thinks I made Lust,_ Roy realized suddenly. "I wasn't the one trying to bring you back." And holy shit, of course Edward had no idea who had made Lust. If he had, he wouldn't have been wallowing in his rage.

It hadn't occurred to Roy that Edward wouldn't have known it immediately.

"It wasn't me," said Roy slowly.

He watched, with a fatalistic kind of horror, as the words sank into Edward. Because, aside from Roy, there was only one person who would have been both interested in bringing a presumed-dead Edward back to life, and capable of executing it.

Pale, pants halfway-buttoned, Edward whispered, "He didn't."

"He did. Edward, he thought ..."

"What happened to him?"


	6. men will remember while men live

The camp was lively with firelight, active with soldiers well after dark, and in a gentle snowfall. Roy could hear the laughter and music right through the closed window. The event was nothing more significant than the belated arrival of the delayed supplies, but since, here, that could easily have been the arrival of life itself, Roy allowed them their celebration on the condition that camp security would not be compromised.

A cool hand touched his shoulder and slid down his arm, wrapping around his wrist under his uniform sleeve. "Come to bed," said Lust.

"I can't." Soldiers moved between the campfires wherever he looked, getting drunk on nothing more potent than their own joy at having chocolate and cigarettes available again; some of them had fiddles and trumpets and put whatever skill they had into the instruments, with their comrades keeping time for them.

The army that Amestris had sent north was vast, and Roy had an obligation to keep as many of them alive as he could. He'd have to start pressing the alchemists into duty. They wouldn't like it, it was boring and repetitive work, but Roy wasn't going to have something like this happen again ... if he had to transmute supplies himself to shame the alchemists into it, he would. He wasn't used to depending on supply lines that were so fragile, but he wouldn't make this same mistake again.

"You're thinking about him, aren't you?" asked Lust, coming to stand behind him at the window. The lamp was cold and dark, and the only light in the room came from the campfires outside.

"Trying not to."

His companion leaned up against his back; Lust was naked, as he usually was when they had a little privacy, and Roy could feel the creature's erection against his thigh. But when the homunculus spoke, his voice was thoughtful, and not seductive at all. "He hates me."

"Yes. I think he does."

"And he hates you. I don't want him to hate you. You didn't do anything."

"That's arguable." Edward's problem with Roy's behavior had more to do with what Roy _hadn't_ done than what he did do, but Roy wasn't going to split hairs. "I could have done more."

"Mmmm." Arms went around Roy's waist, and Roy laid a hand on the creature's hands on his belly. He wished that were Edward behind him, Edward with his cheek pressed against the back of Roy's shoulder, Edward offering him comfort. "What is clear now," said Lust eventually. "Was it clear then?"

"No. But Edward doesn't see it that way."

Lust said nothing more, and although the homunculus was clearly aroused, with his hard cock tucked up against Roy's buttock and the back of his thigh, the creature did nothing to draw Roy toward bed. After a few minutes, Roy patted Lust's hands.

"Let me go," he said. "And if you want to come with me, put some clothes on."

* * *

They looked through the camp for over an hour, in the snow and cold. Roy's breath stood out in front of him like dragonsmoke, even next to the campfires, as he threaded his way between them and offered jovial smiles to the soldiers who recognized and greeted him. Card games were offered, music was offered, saucy salutes and food were offered. Roy returned the salutes and turned the rest down, and moved on through the sprawl of camp.

It was only when they began to return once more to the farmhouse when Lust stopped, and pointed toward the barn. "There," he said. "In there."

The cattle that had been in the barn when the army had first arrived had been slaughtered and eaten almost immediately, and the cavalry horses were billeted in the barn now. There were too many horses for the space, and the barn was warm with their body heat, redolent with their animal stench. A lone corporal was mucking out the stalls, and left immediately when Roy told him to go join the festivities.

Lust stopped dead in the middle of the barn, and pointed toward the tack room.

"Edward?" asked Roy quietly, knocking on the tack room door.

"Get the fuck out," said Edward. That choking sound was still in his voice.

The door creaked as Roy opened it slowly, and the lamplight from the barn proper spilled into the room. Edward had made a pile of the saddle blankets, and was sprawled out across the floor with the blankets piled over him, regulation blue and green with tiny silver regulation hippogriffs sewn into the corners. The tack room was significantly cooler than the rest of the barn, and Roy wondered worriedly how long Edward had been in here. "I'm sorry, Edward," he said.

"Fuck you. _Fuck you._ What the hell good do your apologies do?" Rolling over and turning his back to Roy, Edward pulled one of the saddle blankets over his shoulder and curled up into a smaller ball.

"None. I'm still sorry, Edward. I didn't know he was planning to do that. I would have stopped him if I'd had any idea at all ..."

Edward shivered under the blankets, and after a moment let out a choked, keening sound of fresh grief. Roy forged on forward. "He wouldn't have wanted you to do this to yourself."

"Fuck you," said Edward, and the words were wet.

"Come back to the house, Edward. Get warmed up. We'll open up a bottle of scotch and you can hit me if you want, but don't lay out here in the barn anymore. Have you had anything to eat today?"

"Fuck. You."

Leaning against the doorway, Roy glanced back toward Lust, who was eyeing the tack room as if there were something both fascinating and frightening in there. Roy had long since come to terms with his failure on that night ... he'd had almost seven years of Lust's constant companionship to remind him and dull the pain. He couldn't begrudge Edward his grief, but he couldn't just watch Edward fall apart either. "Edward ..."

"Did you bury him?" asked Edward suddenly.

Roy moved into the tack room and crouched down on the floor beside the door. "Yes," he said. "I did."

"You personally. You did it."

"Yes. I owed you that much."

That seemed to mollify Edward somewhat, and after a moment he sat up a little, shedding saddle blankets. He drew in a deep breath, and the emotions that had been so close to the surface settled down somewhat, leaving the blond man slightly calmer in the dim light. "What was he like?" he asked quietly. "Did I succeed? Was he ... human again?"

"Yes," said Roy, with a melancholy little smile. He hadn't thought about Alphonse in a long time, many years ... when he looked at Lust, he always thought of Lust's template, not his creator. "He was human. It was ... beautiful, the most beautiful alchemy I had ever seen. He looked a lot like you, but he came back ... young, for some reason. He didn't remember anything beyond when you two had tried to raise your mother."

Edward sat in silence, wiping drying tears off his face, and listened. After a moment, Roy continued, "Out of everyone, he was the only one who believed that you were still alive."

"Did he," said Edward softly, and the unstable calmness cracked. "Then why ..."

"I don't know. I didn't get a chance to ask him. By the time I got there, it was already too late. The transmutation was out of control."

He paused because Edward was raising a hand to his face, mouth twisting as he looked away and covered the expression with his fingers. "Wasted," whispered Edward, and Roy wanted to go over there, wrap up all that anguish in his arms and hold it close, smother it against his chest. Why was he just sitting here, letting Edward suffer on the other side of the room? "I did it all for him, and ..."

Watching Edward collapse in on himself, for a second time, was almost too much for Roy. But would Edward really welcome an embrace? This wasn't the child he remembered, the one he looked at every day in the mirror of Lust. This was a man, not even really a young man ... a man in his middle twenties, who had already made his feelings about Roy eminently clear. Should he leave instead, and give Edward some privacy with his emotions?

Roy looked down toward the floor, wishing helplessly that there were something, anything, that he could do.

Eventually, Edward gasped for breath and wiped his face again. "Was he happy?" he asked miserably.

A difficult question. Roy took his time considering his answer. "He was ... I think he was as happy as he could be. Do you think he could ever have been really happy without you? He ..." Roy decided that Alphonse's frightening obsession with Edward, dressing like his brother, behaving like his brother, as if he could somehow forge a connection with Edward that way ... none of that needed to be said. "He thought about you constantly. I think he was as happy as he could be, considering that you weren't with him."

"And you let him ... try to raise me."

"I didn't know that was what he was going to do. He kept talking about you being alive. He was convinced you were alive. How could I have known that he was planning to _resurrect_ you when he seemed so certain that you were still alive? I knew he was researching something, but I had no idea he'd go that far."

"You let him ... you should have known. _You should have known."_ Edward's automail fingers crushed the corner of a cavalry blanket, scraped across the wood floor of the tack room.

"Probably I should have. But I didn't. I'm not perfect. If I were, a lot of things that happened to the two of you wouldn't have."

Edward went silent again, struggling with his emotions, and Roy looked away so as not to bear witness to that. "I'm sorry," he said. "I really am. I loved him, too. I loved him because he was your brother, and because he was a very kind person in his own right."

"You had better not have fucked him, too," said Edward thickly.

"No. Of course not." Vaguely insulted by the intimation that he might have, Roy repressed the annoyance; Edward was not really in control of himself at the moment. "I did what I could. When I found out what he was doing, I went to the lab right away to stop him, but it was too late. The transmutation was already out of control. All I could do was watch." As the reaction cut Alphonse apart, and built a twisted, pulsing _thing_ that cried in pain and looked at him with Edward's eyes. A thing he had instinctively wanted to destroy, but couldn't bring himself to try. The wrenching unreality of that night was distant now, dealt with in dreams and nightmares of guilt, and it didn't want to come rising to the surface again.

"And now you're fucking the thing he made," said Edward, voice trembling. "You're fucking the thing that cost him his _life."_

It took a moment for Roy to respond to that. A moment to measure his answer, calculate the cruelty. "Did you want me to waste the effort, and just destroy Lust? Make Alphonse's death mean nothing?"

Edward glared at him, fury overwhelming his grief. "You son of a bitch ..."

"It was _hard_ to live with Lust and not touch him. He looks like you, and ..." And Roy had loved Edward, but now was not the time to say it. "He wanted it. He wanted me. I'm not superhuman, Edward, and the alternative was to kill him. Killing him was out of the question. It would have made your brother's sacrifice meaningless."

"I hate you so fucking much," said Edward. "I hate you so. Fucking. Much." He wiped his face off on one of the saddle blankets and stood up.

Roy stood as well. "I couldn't kill him, and if you think I could have something around me that looked like you and _wanted_ me, and not ..."

"Fuck you," said Edward. "Just ... _fuck you._ You let him _die,_ and then you use the thing he made for your own personal fucktoy, and you offer me excuses?"

"I didn't just let him die, Edward. I did what I could to stop him, and it wasn't enough. Do you think I never regretted that? Do you think I never looked back and wished I'd seen it sooner?"

The strength seemed to go out of Edward's good leg, and he tilted abruptly sideways; only the nearness of the shadowed tack room wall saved him from falling. "Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Alphonse."

Before he could let himself think about it too much, Roy took three steps to cross the distance and pulled Edward against himself. A hard automail fist struck him twice in the chest, but not hard enough to make Roy let go, and then the metal fingers curled in the lapel of his coat. Edward keened softly into his shoulder, and Roy let him, where nobody could see it.

The way Edward felt, the way he smelled ... Roy rested his cheek against the top of Edward's head and held him tightly. He wouldn't be surprised at all if Edward hated him forever after this.

"Let go," said Edward eventually, and the shove against Roy's chest was implacable this time. Roy released the man who had once been his lover and looked away as Edward scrubbed the moisture off his face again. Pretended not to see it.

"Let's go up to the house," Roy said. "We'll open that bottle of scotch. It's a miracle that it's made it this far north without getting broken, so we should drink it before its luck runs out."

"You want to fucking drink with me," said Edward. "That's rich."

"At least get out of the barn."

Edward stepped toward the tack room door, and one of the horses whickered as Lust retreated. "Everything I was doing," said Edward quietly. "Everything I ever worked toward, was for him. I wanted ... to get south to see him. But now ... what would be the point?"

Roy moved to lay a hand on Edward's shoulder, but Edward moved away before Roy could touch him. Roy didn't chase him, and let his hand drop. "What was it that you always told other people to do? Keep walking forward?"

A weak snort, but Edward stopped at least, next to one of the tethered cavalry horses. "Toward what?" he asked bitterly.

Roy had no answer for that, and said nothing. Edward's long ponytail swayed as he walked toward the barn door.

* * *

"Come to bed," said Lust, raising a hand toward Roy. He lay atop the sheets, naked and aroused in the flickering lamplight.

Shaking his head, Roy said, "I can't, Lust."

"Come to bed," the homunculus said again. "I'll just hold you. You don't have to let me fuck you. I want to, but if you don't, I'll just hold you."

Edward hadn't come to the house. Roy wasn't sure where he'd gone - he'd disappeared into the camp by the time Roy had gotten out of the barn - but the house hadn't been it. The celebration was starting to wind down, and the music wasn't so loud anymore; it was bitterly cold outside, and Roy still hoped that Edward would come to the farmhouse to sleep.

"Stop thinking about him."

"I can't," said Roy. He glanced toward Lust, lithe Lust with a teenager's body and Edward's face. "I'm worried about him."

Lust was silent for a moment, and then said slowly, "But I'm here."

"I know that."

"I've always been here for you."

"Lust ..." What was there to say? Roy looked toward the window again. "Just ... be quiet, okay?"

There was a sound from the bed as the homunculus rolled over, then the skitter of paper as the creature messed around with the maps of the pass on the floor. Roy knew that he really should go to sleep, whether in Lust's arms or not, but Edward was somewhere out in the gently-falling snow, no doubt thinking of Roy's failure so long ago. How could he let a thing with Edward's face soothe him to sleep knowing that?

"You don't love me," said Lust suddenly.

Roy turned toward the bed again, to see Lust manipulating the maps with the tips of his extended talons. Turning them around, matching them against each other. "What?" asked Roy.

"You never did. You loved him. You wanted me to be him."

To deny that would be to lie. "You told me you wanted to be human," said Roy carefully. "When I thought he was dead, that seemed like the easiest way. You were intended to be him from the start, after all."

"That isn't going to happen now, is it?" Something disturbing was marring Lust's expression, something dangerous. "You were going to give me his soul. You can't do that if he still has it, can you?"

That was true, and was something Roy had already realized, although he'd been putting it out of his mind. "We'll find another way to make you human again, Lust."

"You don't even want me to be human now." Lust looked up at him, and that dangerous emotion was darkening his eyes. "You only wanted me to be human so I could be him for you. I wanted to be him for you. But now you have him back, and you don't want me at all anymore. You want _him_ even though he hates you."

"No," said Roy, and he moved away from the window. He half-expected Lust to shove him away the way Edward had, but Lust compliantly turned onto his back, let Roy crawl on top of him and kiss him. "That isn't true," he whispered.

"It is. I'm extraneous now."

"No," said Roy again, and he pressed his lips under Lust's jaw. "You're not extraneous."

What other way, though, was there to make a homunculus human? In truth, Roy didn't even know that it was possible to do the way he'd originally planned, but the equations had come out correctly and the alchemy was solid. Now that the original plan had been scuttled, what could he do?

"Tell me that you love me then," said Lust, hands on Roy's back. "Tell me how you miss me and how you always loved me and never told me. Call me by his name."

The kisses slowed and then stopped, and Roy drew back a little. He dropped his forehead to Lust's shoulder, and sighed there. "I can't do that," he whispered. Keep up that charade, now that he knew that the confessions had been hollow? "Not anymore."

One of the hands on his back clenched, and he felt the prickle of claws as they sank through the fabric. Almost as soon as they touched his skin, they retreated. Roy pushed himself up from Lust's body, and looked down at the homunculus.

"We'll find another way to make you human," he told Lust. "I promise. We're still going to draw the array. We'll need that no matter what we do. We'll find some other way. I can't pretend anymore that you're Edward, but that doesn't mean that I can't ..." He paused, unwilling to say what he'd been about to say.

Lust reached up to touch Roy's cheek, talons still extended and sharp, although he was careful with them. "Let me make you come, then," said the homunculus. "Let me feel that."

"I can't." Roy reached up and pulled Lust's hand away from his face, kissed the back of the creature's hand. "Give me a little time with this, Lust."

The dark light of what Roy now recognized as rage flickered in the creature's drab eyes, and then was gone. Lust nodded, and Roy transferred his kiss to his companion's chin before starting to take off his clothes so he could sleep. He tucked the homunculus up against his chest once the lamp was off, and rested his cheek against the creature's head the same way he'd rested his cheek against Edward's.

He knew now that his memory had lied, and Lust did not smell like Edward at all.


	7. the planets knew not where their places were

When Lust refused to go more than halfway through the foyer, and stopped before reaching the farmhouse door, Roy knew that Edward was outside. He left the homunculus in the foyer, and went to see what Edward wanted.

The blond stood in the trampled snow at the bottom of the porch steps, looking up toward the guarded door. He looked fragile, like he was holding himself together with willpower alone, but his expression hardened when Roy came into view. "About time," he said.

"You could have come inside if you wanted to find me so badly," said Roy, pulling his gloves out of his coat pockets and putting them on. Even the daytime temperatures were dropping. He had a meeting with the alchemists later that afternoon to discuss options for taking the pass, as well as taking the town at the other end; they had to advance into the town if they wanted to survive the winter.

Edward just snorted, and left whatever reasons he had for waiting outside unsaid. "We need to have a talk."

Turning around, Roy told Lust, "Follow us, okay?" When the homunculus nodded sullenly, Roy walked down the steps and, carefully, onto the hard-packed snowy path that led away from the farmhouse through the camp. "I was on my way to see Havok. You can come with me, we'll talk on the way."

"Yeah, about that." Edward fell into step beside Roy, eyes down to watch the path in front of him. "I want you to draft me."

Eh? "What are you talking about?" Roy smiled and nodded to one of the company commanders as they passed her.

"I can't just stay here with your damned army and not do anything and ... there's not a lot of point in heading back to Central now. It's going to drive me crazy. I don't care what you do with me, put me in the infantry if you want."

"I'd put you with the other alchemists if I did," he said. "I don't know why I should, though."

"What else are you going to do with me?"

"Send you south. We get supply shipments every couple of days, you could go back with the empty trucks as they return."

Edward made a dissatisfied sound. "What would be the point?" he asked, and his voice was bleak.

"What would be the point of drafting you?"

A passing junior officer greeted Roy, and greeted Edward as well but called him Lust, which made Edward growl. "This is getting damned annoying, I'll have you know. Everybody in this damned army keeps calling me Lust, and asking me 'Where's the General' as if I'm your keeper or something."

"Lust is never far away from me," said Roy mildly. "If they think they're seeing Lust, then they're going to wonder why they're not seeing me as well."

"... really." Edward glanced back over his shoulder, and then said, "That's fucked up. Why is that?"

Roy spared a look behind him as well, toward the homunculus trailing behind them. Whatever it was about Edward's presence that warded Lust away, the creature was making a game effort to overcome it, and was only about six yards back. "It's a long story," he said.

"We should trade long stories sometime."

"I still have that bottle of scotch if you want to come by the house later."

"... I'll think about it."

Edward fell into silence then, and Roy did not interrupt it. The day was gray but clear, puffy clouds scraping across the mountains, and the mountains themselves so clear and sharp in the cold air that it seemed that Roy could reach out his hand and touch one. The cold bit into his ears and nose.

He wondered where Edward had been sleeping.

"So anyway," said Edward eventually. "I want you to draft me."

"Why?" Roy lowered his voice slightly, to keep the soldiers that they walked by from hearing. "So that you can charge out at the head of the army and be the first one shot?"

A low growl from Edward's direction. "Don't insult me, you bastard. Do you think I have nothing to offer? I lived in Velastok for over a year before they arrested me. It wouldn't be hard to get back in and see what's going on."

Roy opened his mouth automatically to deny this, but then paused to consider. Havok had been trying to find a way to get someone into the town at the other end of the pass for quite some time, but to all reports, all comings and goings were being closely monitored by the Drachmen military. No method to get someone into the town had yet been found ... at least, no method plausible enough that Havok was willing to risk someone on it. If Edward had really lived there, however, he might have information on that topic which was not available to someone on the outside.

"Talk to Havok first," said Roy.

Edward gave him a sideways look. "What for?"

"He's in charge of intelligence. You're not going anywhere if it means going over his head. If he approves it ..."

A choked, almost barking sound interrupted him, and Roy looked down at the younger man beside him; he realized belatedly that it was supposed to represent laughter. "What?"

"You put _Havok_ in charge of intelligence?"

"He's actually quite good at it. Anyway, get a uniform. You'll be reinstated as a Major. Talk to Havok after the meeting and he'll set up all the paperwork. That shouldn't take long. He'll also ..."

Roy had been walking very carefully on the hard-packed snow, and furthermore the surface was rough underfoot from all the traffic that crossed this main thoroughfare through the middle of the camp. It therefore surprised him quite a bit when his foot slipped, and he lost his balance.

It surprised him even more when he tried to catch himself, and his right leg folded under him, sending him spilling to the ground.

The next few seconds passed in what seemed to be slow motion, as the calm noises of the camp around him suddenly erupted like a disturbed anthill, shouts and orders cracking through the air, blue uniforms crowding closely around him, and a voice very nearby yelling over and over, "The General is down! The General is down!" Roy wanted to object that that ... he wasn't "down," he'd merely fallen on the ice, but his voice didn't seem to be working for some reason.

And when he tried to stand up, his right leg not only didn't want to obey, it bloomed into the most excruciating, fiery pain.

"Stay down," said Lust, and the homunculus' hands were on his shoulders, holding him to the ground. "Don't try to stand."

Well, of course he could stand. He was in command of this army, and he couldn't very well command it from his back on the ground. There were shots coming from the middle distance now, and Roy needed to know what was going on, needed to understand the situation so he could get it under control. And for that, he had to be on his feet.

But when he tried again to rise, Lust shoved him back down. Damn the creature for being so strong.

"Lust," he said, and the word came out as a whisper. "Let me up."

The homunculus paid no attention. "Can we get him under some kind of cover?" he asked the soldiers who surrounded Roy.

"Over there," said someone else. "That big tent is the enlisted mess hall."

"Grab his legs, I'll get his arms."

The world sped back up to normal speed as hands took hold of Roy, picking him up and jarring the sunfire focus of agony in his leg. Roy tried to bite down on the cry of pain, and almost succeeded in smothering it as he was carried, awkwardly and quickly, out from under the bright sky and into what could only be one of the camp tents.

"It's all right," said Lust. "You're okay. Lift him up."

A jolt of pain went through him as he was hoisted up onto one of the tables, and he tried again not to cry out. There was activity all around him, and someone sent someone else to find one of the doctors.

"I'm okay," said Roy, and frowned because he was still whispering. Blood rushed through his ears, audibly pounding and making it hard to think. "I'm fine, I can stand."

"Be quiet, General," said Lust, and Roy looked up to see the brilliant gold of the creature's hair.

"Holy shit, that's a lot of blood."

"Give me a jacket. Or a shirt or something."

"Where'd that blond guy go? The other one."

"Lust? He ran off toward the shots. Probably killing them."

Roy frowned and reached up toward the shock of blond hair that he knew to be Lust, and managed to snag the trailing ends; if Lust was here, then it must have been Edward who had run off. Edward would be furious to be mistaken for the homunculus yet again. He wanted to say something, but his train of thought was interrupted by the rip of cloth, and then something tightening around his leg, high at the groin, cutting painfully into his flesh. He tried to sit up, shake off the debilitating shock that was keeping him from understanding what was going on around him, but Lust's hands shoved him back down onto his back on the table.

"Stay down," said Lust. "You'll be all right. Tighter, get that tighter. He's still bleeding."

"Lust," whispered Roy, as what he now knew was a makeshift tourniquet at his groin was twisted tighter. He was lightheaded, and there was cold and warmth across his thigh ... cold from the winter air, warmth from his own blood.

"It's okay," said Lust. "You'll be okay. You lost some blood ..."

"He lost a _lot_ of blood," said someone else.

"Shut the fuck up," said Lust furiously. "He's right here, do you think he's deaf?"

"Lust," said Roy again, and tugged on the blond hair he'd managed to grab. His fingers were weak, so he twisted it to keep a grip on it. "You ... sound just like Edward."

"That's because I _am_ Edward, you idiot. You stay alive now, you hear me? You're not going to die here."

"You can't call the General an idiot. Who the hell are you?"

"I'll call him whatever the fuck I want. What's your name? Who's your commanding officer?"

That sounded right. Lust was Edward, after all. In a way. Roy smiled as the voices argued over him. If he didn't move, the pain wasn't so bad. It was burrowed into his thigh, grinding through the bone and flesh, but as long as he remained very still, it was endurable. Something far away, something that was happening to someone else. The only problem, really, was that it was hard to breathe.

"Lust," he said, and again it came out as a hoarse whisper.

"It's okay," said Lust softly. "You're going to be okay. You're not going to die from a shot in the leg, that's for sure."

"Come," whispered Roy, and pulled on the creature's hair. The homunculus leaned lower, obediently putting his ear near Roy's lips so he could listen. "Tell Edward."

"What?" asked Lust. "Tell Edward what?"

"Everything. I told you."

"I already told you, you son of a bitch, you're not going to die here, so stop getting morbid."

"I want him ... to know. Never ... the right time."

"... want me to know what?"

Something jarred his leg, and Roy's body jerked, even before his mind registered how _excruciating_ the pain was when that happened. He was clenching Lust's hair, but the homunculus didn't complain ... probably couldn't even feel pain.

"Hold him down," said a new voice, and weight came down on his legs and shoulders, just before the flesh around the gunshot wound was manipulated. Roy didn't even try to hold back the scream this time. All he could see was the drab ceiling of the tent, and in the edge of his field of vision, bright gold; all he could feel was the pain.

"Yeah, this is no good. We'll have to move him into surgery. Is the fighting cleared up out there yet?"

The level of pain slackened again, back down to something that was closer to tolerable, and Roy was released and allowed to breathe again as best he could. Somehow Lust's hair had gotten away from his fingers, and Roy tried to reach for it again. "Lust," he whispered.

"You're fine," said Lust. "You're going to be okay, you hear me? You're going to be fine."

With the pain back down to a lower growl in his leg, Roy wanted to close his eyes and just sleep. There was something he'd wanted to say to Lust, but he couldn't remember it now ... if it was important, he'd remember. Roy would tell him later, when he recalled it.

"Hey," said Lust. "Hey, don't do that. Open your eyes, you son of a bitch."

Roy would have sworn that he was too tired to do that, but when he was slapped across the face, he found that he wasn't after all. That was going too far. Lust had rarely struck him in the past, and Roy had never tolerated it before. He wasn't going to tolerate it now. "Lust," he said, and was annoyed when it came out as a scratchy whisper instead of the reprimand he'd intended.

"Good. You know, you and I are going to have to talk about this Lust thing later, but you just stay with me now, okay?"

Oh yes. That reminded Roy of what he'd wanted to tell his companion earlier. It was hard to keep a grip on what was happening, but he knew that he was injured, badly enough to be losing a lot of blood. "Come," he said again, and reached for Lust's hair.

"What?" Lust leaned closer once more. "They're going to move you soon, what is it?"

"Tell Edward," Roy whispered.

"Yeah, tell me what?"

"Tell Edward ..." He trailed off. Tell Edward what? Roy couldn't remember.

And then Lust was being moved away from him by uniformed people that Roy didn't recognize, and could barely focus on. When he was transferred off of the table and onto a stretcher, the sheer intensity of the pain in his leg drove all other thoughts out of his mind. And once he was settled, he saw no further reason to stay awake at all.

* * *

"Sign here, sir," said Hawkeye, and Roy signed what she put in front of him. "And here. And ... right there."

He handed the clipboard back to her, and shifted uncomfortably as the motion stretched the stitches in his leg. "I want a meeting with the alchemists here tomorrow afternoon," he said. "Also, tell Havok to coordinate with Colonel Vance until I'm back on my feet. No word from Edward yet?"

"No, sir." Hawkeye's pen made dry sounds on the paper as she made notes, and Roy engaged in a moment of irritation.

"Make a note of this, too, Lieutenant Colonel. When Edward _does_ get back, remind me to have him horsewhipped in the middle of the camp."

More dry scratching as Hawkeye dutifully wrote that down ... or at least pretended to. "I doubt that will make much of an impression on him, sir."

"It will make me feel better, at least."

"Yes," said Lust softly, from where he knelt on the floor beside the bed. Hawkeye gave the Sin a hard frown.

Roy tried to sit up a bit more, and found that he couldn't without putting more pressure on the stitches in his leg than he liked. "Leave the reports," he said. "And help me up here before you go, would you?" He held out an arm toward Hawkeye.

That disapproving frown turned to him next. She took his arm, though, and helped him drag himself to a more upright position; then she began to tuck the pillows and blankets around him without comment. She also flipped the edge of the coverlet up to give the bandages over the wound a cursory check in the process.

"Stop that," he told her, and flipped it down again. Wounded or not, _Hawkeye_ or not, there was no call for a female soldier to be getting under his blankets when he was in nothing but boxers in bed!

Whatever she'd seen on the bandages must not have been too bad, because she brushed off his protests with an extremely unimpressed look. "I'll be back soon," she told him. "Send Lust for one of the guards if you need anything. And remember that you are _not_ to be out of bed for any reason, and you are _not_ to ... exert yourself."

"My ears work fine," Roy said, annoyed, as he sorted through the reports. "I heard the doctor perfectly when he said that."

"Just making sure you remember." Hawkeye glared a little at Lust before letting herself out.

As if Roy would seriously try to have sex with a freshly-stitched gunshot wound in his leg. Even if he were inclined to try it, he wasn't on nearly enough morphine because it made him groggy, and he couldn't afford to doze for days ... it wasn't as if the war would just wait on him. Every time he so much as _thought_ about moving, his leg would send him some warning twinges, and if he got really energetic and tried to shift to a different position without help, he could end up in tears.

There was a syringe on the dresser, though, measured out for when he decided to sleep.

Edward had left before Roy was even out of surgery. He'd checked with Havok, as Roy had instructed, and told Havok heaven-only-knew-what to get permission to head back through the pass, and had sauntered off long before Roy had woken up. He'd been gone only a day, but already Roy was worried; Edward's mental state had been questionable when they'd spoken just before the sniper attack. Roy hadn't yet had a chance to speak with Havok about the matter in detail, but he could only hope that Havok had been smart enough to arrange things so that no other Intelligence projects could be jeopardized if Edward were to be caught or killed.

He didn't want to think about Edward being caught or killed. But wasn't that his obligation?

"My alchemist," whispered Lust, and Roy glanced toward his companion. Lust, he was told, had run off toward the attacking Drachmen guerrillas as soon as he'd been shot, presumably since the creature couldn't hover over Roy with Edward there. Roy still wasn't convinced that he'd gotten all the blood off of Lust's talons. It disturbed him that Lust had left him, but considering that he'd been walking with what amounted to an anti-Lust talisman, he supposed that the homunculus had done what he could.

Roy put down the reports; everything he was seeing in them could wait until the morning. "Did you get hurt?" he asked, running his fingers through Lust's coarse, heavy hair.

"Yes. I couldn't protect you. I wanted to protect you ..."

"Shhhh." Roy smiled and stroked the pale skin of the homunculus' cheek. He didn't want Lust to drop into another flurry of blaming himself for what had happened to Roy. "You couldn't do anything with Edward there. I know that. How hurt were you?"

The homunculus refused to answer, and that was all the answer Roy needed. The few times that Lust had gotten caught in crossfire, he'd never made any effort to dodge the bullets, and the creature _could_ die ... and frequently did. It wasn't as permanent a condition as it generally was for a human, but it did have long-term effects.

"Go bring me the small case, over there." He pointed.

Lust knew which one he meant, and brought it over, offering it to him with an almost reverent air. "My alchemist," he whispered.

Roy took the case and set it beside him on the bed before opening it. The sullen glow spilled out through the first crack between case and lid, and did not diffuse when he opened it the rest of the way. Lust squirmed a little, and Roy patted the bed beside him. "Come up here," he said. "No, you can't get into my lap. Be careful, I'm hurt."

Lust crawled up onto the bed, kneeling on the mattress beside Roy and, unsolicited, began to unbutton the soft white shirt that Roy had worn to bed. Once the garment was open, he started touching Roy's chest and throat, while Roy carefully unlatched the inside of the case. On the top were vials of incomplete Philosopher's Stone, produced in quantity by State Alchemists in the past and still kept on hand for emergencies; Roy had brought a small supply north, just in case he needed to issue some to his own alchemists. The vials were warm, the temperature of blood.

Beneath, in a compartment that would be easily overlooked by anyone who didn't know it was there and who got excited by the discovery of the vials of incomplete Stone, were small boxes that weren't warm, and contained duller, more solid and irregular stones. Lust kissed him on the shoulder, and then on the side of his neck as Roy pulled out one of the boxes.

"My alchemist," said the homunculus softly.

Roy opened the box, and took out one of the red stones inside, holding it up toward Lust. The creature closed his eyes as he took the stone between his lips, tongue flicking the tips of Roy's fingers in the process. He made a small sound of pleasure as he crunched it between his teeth and swallowed.

Lust moved, as if to straddle Roy's thighs, and Roy said again, "No. Stay beside me. You can't get into my lap."

"Touch me," moaned Lust, eyes closed, licking his lips and rolling onto his back, mouth opening for another stone.

Roy smiled to himself as he rubbed the homunculus' belly and throat. Lust knew where the stones were kept, but never went for them on his own; there was something special for the homunculus in being fed the stones, and he always waited for Roy to decide he needed more.

No matter how unnatural Roy knew Lust to be ... no matter how dangerous, or how _wrong_ the thing's existence, Roy would never fear his companion. Something between lover and pet ... stronger and far more deadly than Roy could ever be, yet dependent upon him for something Roy did not completely understand. The creature squirmed eagerly on the bed, arms above his head and begging wordlessly for the stones as Roy fed them one by one into Lust's mouth, whimpering for them when Roy withheld them.

When Roy trailed one of the stones over Lust's ouroborus, the homunculus moaned with a pleasure that sounded distinctly sexual. It required a bit of painful shifting around, but Roy managed to lean over a little, so that he could hold a stone in the creature's mouth, not releasing it so that Lust could swallow it, but making Lust suck on it, and slid his other hand under the sleek black cloth that covered Lust's groin. Tracing the wet stone around the homunculus' parted lips while stroking the hard erection that his hand encountered produced gratifying results: groans of pleasure, whines of denial, writhing and thrusting into his fingers.

It had been a while since he'd had sex with Lust ... before Edward had shown up so unexpectedly in Drachman custody. He'd almost forgotten, in his fixation on Edward, how beautiful Lust could be.

Edward was always so closed-off, guarded, but Lust ... Lust gave every bit of himself to Roy.

"More," whispered Lust, and Roy wasn't sure if he was begging for red stones, or more sexual stimulation. Roy offered both, and wished he wasn't injured.

When Lust came, sucking on a stone, he whispered "Colonel." Roy leaned down, at the cost of pulling pain in his leg, to kiss the homunculus on the corner of his mouth.

"That's all," he said, although there were a few more stones left in the box. It wasn't necessary for Lust to eat them all, and there was no way to know when he would be able to find more.

"So good to me," murmured Lust, writhing around on the sheets, and taking Roy's hand to lick his own come off Roy's fingers. The stuff wasn't semen, but it was a reasonable analog, and Roy was just as happy to let Lust take care of it. Around Roy's fingers, Lust whispered, "Touch me more."

"Later," said Roy. When he got his hand back, he put the box away, back into the case with the other boxes of red stone and the incomplete Philosopher's Stone, and closed everything back up. The case was set down on the floor beside the bed.

Lust looked up at him as he straightened back up, got himself comfortable again, and began to stroke the homunculus' belly; the look was drowsy, even though the thing never slept. Smooth, unmarked but for the ouroborus, forever trapped at the apparent age of sixteen, Lust was really a lot less like Edward than Roy had always thought. Lust's body was sleek and soft, not like Edward's wiry strength, and the fact that Edward had chosen to grow his hair down to his rear and wear a stiff edge of blond bristle along his jaw didn't help the lack of resemblance. In fact, now that he'd had the chance to compare Lust with Edward almost side-by-side, he'd have to say that they looked less like twins, and more like brothers.

"You're thinking about him," said Lust suddenly.

Roused out of the contemplation, Roy said, "How do you know that?"

"You get this look to you when you're thinking about him. I want you to stop it. I'm here, and he ran off." Lust squirmed a little, and grabbed Roy's hand to use it to caress his own inner thigh. "I hope he gets himself killed."

Startled, Roy yanked his hand back. "Don't say that," he said, irritated. "Don't even think that."

"Why not?" The Sin sat up, and rubbed his cheek against Roy's shoulder. "It wouldn't be your fault. It wouldn't be my fault either. It would be his own fault for doing something stupid. And then you could give me his soul, because he wouldn't need it anymore, and not feel guilty about it."

Reminding himself that this kind of thing was in the homunculus' nature, Roy took a breath to control the instinctive anger. He frowned at Lust and said, "And then what? Then you'd have his soul, and you'd be him, and you'd remember that you'd basically wished yourself dead. I hope you realize how ridiculous that would be."

Lust went quiet, and then said slowly, "I hadn't thought of it that way."

"That's right. So don't even think something like that."

"Mmmm." After looking contemplative for a moment, Lust resumed stroking his cheek against Roy's shoulder. "Touch me again."


	8. faint, feeble, with no fate assigned them

Getting from the house into the jeep was an adventure. Even when Hawkeye arranged it so that the jeep was pulled right up to within a yard of the porch, Roy still had to look forward to going all the way down the stairs from the master bedroom, through the meeting room and war room, and out through the foyer, down the porch steps ... 

Lust could have carried him, easily, and had offered to do it yesterday. Yesterday, Roy had nearly taken him up on it when he'd lost his footing on the narrow stairs and almost slipped down them; he'd only caught himself because Hawkeye had insisted on going down the stairs directly in front of him, and Lust had grabbed him by the collar when he'd started to fall. _That_ had been damned painful, jarring the wound in his leg enough to make Roy light-headed. Today, however, Roy was determined to make it to the jeep with a minimum of assistance.

Only the fact that he couldn't so much as stand on his own - even his uninjured leg refused to completely hold his weight - convinced him that he needed any assistance at all.

Once he was down the stairs, Lust was at his side. "Here, Colonel," said the homunculus softly, and took Roy's arm by the elbow. Frightfully strong when he wanted to be, Lust was capable of holding Roy up at the most awkward of angles, and did so in order to make it seem less like Roy was leaning on him. Rarely had Roy been more grateful toward his sometimes-insufferable companion.

From the way the surgeons talked, it was likely that he'd never walk without a limp again, even if his luck held out and no infection developed in the wound. He had to put the best face onto that that he could, though. His soldiers would forgive a limp. They would definitely forgive a temporary convalescence, but it had to be _temporary._ The sooner Roy was up and visibly about, the better.

Making it down the stairs and out the door to the jeep, however, felt like it would be about his limit at the moment.

Someone stood up as he hobbled his way through the meeting room, and Roy spared only a glance that direction and didn't pause. "Lieutenant Colonel Brandt," he greeted. "I was just on my way to do a final inspection of the approach to the mountain." Actually, Havok and Colonel Hobbs had already handled that, and Roy was going to look at the area a second time only to put the final seal of approval on the attack plans.

If only to prove that he wasn't incapacitated.

"General," Brandt said, offering the kind of sloppy salute that no one but an alchemist could get away with using. "I wanted to discuss the deployment of this wire. Do you really think wire is the best choice?"

"Well, you know that if you have a better idea, now is definitely the time. There's weather on the way, and we have to get as much of it as we can out tonight before the snow hits. We've delayed too long as it is, and anything that doesn't get done tonight will be harder to do later."

Brandt followed him into the foyer; even with his back almost completely turned to the man, Roy did not miss the way Brandt eyed Lust as he directed his words to Roy. "I'm afraid that the configuration will get disturbed as the enemy walks over it. You of all people don't need to be told how important it is that the configuration remains precisely ..."

"Yes, yes." Roy waved a hand. "If we're lucky, the wire will be buried in the snow and protected."

"I'm hesitant to rely upon luck for this, General sir. I'd really like to bury the wire. Underground."

"If you're willing to go with the deployment squad, you're welcome to bury it yourself."

"Sir?" Brandt walked in front of Roy to the front door, and held it open while Roy dragged his slow way through it. This journey to the jeep was arduous.

"You can't very well expect a squad of non-alchemists to physically bury a couple dozen miles of wire, Lieutenant Colonel. If you want to go with them to alchemically bury it, that's about the only way it's going to get underground."

Brandt went silent to consider it. Roy fully expected the man to turn the opportunity down, as Brandt was a notorious coward, and so no one was surprised more than Roy when the other alchemist said, "Yes sir, with your permission I'd like to do that."

"Fine," said Roy, and waved the man aside. The jeep was in sight, right down there at the bottom of the porch steps; he was exhausted, and his leg was a streak of fire, from his knee all the way up to his hip. It was difficult not to get snappish with what was, after all, a perfectly reasonable concern from the alchemist in charge of the transmutation. "Go see Colonel Vance, tell him what you need."

 _"Sir."_ The salute that Brandt gave him was sharper this time, but Roy didn't return it, and eventually Brandt skipped down the steps and strode off between the jeeps waiting on Roy.

Damn the man for being able to _walk._ He made it look so easy.

Hawkeye was in the front seat of the jeep nearest to the house, with a driver Roy did not recognize who saluted and seemed to not know what to do with himself when Roy did not salute back. It was bright, almost too bright with the sun lancing up off the snowy ground, and Roy paused at the top of the porch steps to deal with his squint; thankfully, nobody tried to come help him down the stairs.

There were four vehicles altogether, with Colonel Hobbs and some of his staff, several of the ubiquitous armed guards, and one of Hawkeye's lieutenants. They were watching him as he made his way, homunculus-assisted, down the steps ... and making a show of not watching him at the same time. Lust clambered all over the jeep to get Roy settled, and then perched on his accustomed place on the back of it.

Roy felt a lot better once he was sitting down, and he didn't even spare any annoyance for Lust crouching behind him this time, because the extra space meant that he could stretch his wounded leg out some. That felt damned good.

"Sir," said Hawkeye quietly from the front seat. "If you don't want to ..."

"I'm fine," said Roy sharply. "As long as nobody expects me to walk farther than a couple of yards, I'm fine. Let's go."

She gave him a searching look, but if anyone understood the importance of keeping up appearances, it was Hawkeye. She gestured to the driver to start the vehicle.

* * *

The ridge upon which they stopped barely deserved the name. It was just a jutting pillow of gray rock, liberally frosted with snow, shoved up out of the ground by the same forces that had created the mountains themselves. There were no trees upon it, and the snow was already tamped down by earlier excursions here.

Roy had never felt so impotent in his life, confined to the back seat of a vehicle which he would not be able to drive even if he'd been behind the wheel. He took the binoculars which were offered to him, and surveyed land that had already been extensively photographed, judged and weighed by those far more competent than himself in leading infantry and armor into combat; Roy had next to no experience in this, having spent the last war mostly on his own, snapping his fingers at anything that moved.

"The biggest issue that we have, sir," said Colonel Hobbs, in his customary, borderline-belligerent tone, "is that rise of land right over there. If the enemy has any sense, he'll have some kind of watch on that rise, and as soon as we're spotted on it, he'll know we're coming."

"Where would you put a watch like that?" asked Roy. He couldn't see the rise in question very well, even with binoculars, because his jeep couldn't get close enough to the edge of the ridge to really clear the tops of the trees on the land under the cliff.

"Not sure. Sides of the mountains maybe. Maybe somewhere in the pass itself. You could probably see that rise from anywhere." Hobbs was an older man, rather put out by answering to a general younger than himself, and as far as he was concerned Lust was just a frivolous indulgence that Roy granted himself because he had no one to tell him he couldn't; of all of Roy's immediate subordinates, Hobbs usually had the most to say on the topic of Lust. Today, thankfully, he said nothing ... probably because it wouldn't look right to criticize in front of the enlisted guards and junior officers.

That, and they had a job to do here. Hobbs never acted quite right unless Roy signed off on the man's plans, and if Roy did so just from aerial photos ... well, Hobbs would never call his immediate superior incompetent. He was far too professional.

Roy made a show of examining the rise as best he could from a seated position in the jeep, and nodded agreeably with Hobbs' assessment. "Well, that's all right, really. The attack through the pass isn't the most important part anyway. I'd like you to try to figure out where they're watching it from, though, so we can take down the surveillance. The farther we get into the pass before they notice, the better."

That part wasn't news to Hobbs, and the Colonel began to give his considered opinion of the rest of the topography of the approach to the mountain pass. Roy listened with only half an ear - he'd agree with everything Hobbs said on this point anyway - and looked out over the snow-laden trees toward the foot of the mountains.

It wasn't until Lust laid a hand on Roy's shoulder that Roy noticed the creature's twitching.

Hobbs broke off when Roy looked away toward the homunculus. "Your ... thing there, seems to want your attention, General."

"What is it, Lust?" asked Roy softly. He made no attempt to conceal his annoyance with the interruption.

The air on top of the ridge where the little convoy had paused was very still; there was not even the slightest wind to brush through Lust's hair. Nevertheless, Lust had his head raised, and was sniffing the air as if scenting the nonexistent wind, and looking dissatisfied with whatever he was - or was not - smelling. A fringe of frost clung to the edges of the homunculus' clothing, white against the sheer black.

"Nearby," said Lust vaguely, and Roy heard the dry sounds of the homunculus' bare feet on frozen steel as the creature shifted his weight.

"You smell something?" asked Roy. Lust _would_ make him play guessing games when he wanted to get all this over with as quickly as possible.

Lust slowly shook his head. "That way." A long black finger indicated down toward the valley, a little east of their current position.

Roy raised his voice. "Lieutenant Colonel?" he called, and Hawkeye came toward him through the snow quickly enough. "Send someone down in that direction, would you?" said Roy, when she was near enough to hear without shouting at her. "See what's gotten into Lust."

"Sir," said Hawkeye, and she moved away from his jeep again to arrange something.

Hobbs was shaking his head as two of the guards slogged off through the virgin snow and down off the ridge in the direction Lust had pointed, but he said nothing about it. Everything the man wanted to say had already been said before, and although Hobbs was too discreet to say it again here, Roy could almost read the Colonel's mind. _With all due respect, sir, do you indulge that creature of yours every time it twitches or has an itch?_

Delays, delays. "My apologies, Colonel, do go on."

When Hobbs resumed his monologue on the particular military applications of each dip and hillock, Roy picked up his binoculars again and resumed his inspection of the area with Lust's claws twitching on his shoulder.

This land was truly beautiful, in the way all deadly things were beautiful. In service to the State, Roy had seen a lot of different types of terrain, but there was something uniquely, gorgeously lethal about these mountains that he'd never encountered anywhere else. That people could live here - could and did, and raised their crops and children - amazed him. That some peasant family had farmed a large parcel of land where his army was now camped, with the Briggs Mountains forever looming over them like an illusion, was absolutely marvelous. Roy wondered if they stopped seeing the mountains after a while ... if the beauty of the land wore on them until they were numb to it.

His musings were abruptly interrupted by gunfire, dull cracking from the shallow valley under the ridge. Roy's lap was immediately full of Lust, surprising the hell out of him and jolting him back into reality as Lust shoved him back into the seat, physically shielding him as well as the homunculus could.

"Back, get back," said both Hobbs and Hawkeye, with Hobbs slamming his fist into the hood of Roy's jeep. Roy's driver started the engine and rolled the jeep backwards, away from the sheer precipice of the ridge.

Having Lust in his lap both jostled Roy's injured leg and made him feel extremely foolish. "Move," he said, shoving hard at the homunculus. "Move it, I mean it. Corporal, stop here. We're far enough back now." Reluctantly, Lust shifted to one side, remaining close beside Roy with his talons extended, crouching on the seat.

After the first few shots, the gunfire ceased, and silence descended over the valley. The rough murmur of Roy's jeep, idling and ready, was the only sound for a long time; all of the guards had their weapons out, but since the fighting had apparently stopped, no one was anxious to draw attention to their presence up here on the ridge. Hawkeye sent two more of the guards off in the direction of the shots to investigate.

"This area is supposed to be secure," said Hobbs softly, after a few minutes had passed.

"Yes, sir," said Hawkeye, and there was nothing more from her on that topic. It had been her responsibility to make sure the area was safe for Roy to enter, and she wasn't the type to try to pass the blame off on someone else.

Hobbs turned toward Roy. "General, you should head back to camp."

"Yes," said Lust apprehensively. The creature's fidgeting was getting worse. "Yes, Colonel, let's go. I won't be able to protect you if he's around. Let's go."

It took a moment for that to register, and Roy grabbed the homunculus' forearm when it did. "What?" When there was no response from Lust, Roy shook the creature by the arm.

A hallo drifted up from the valley, softened by the distance, carrying over the snow. "Lieutenant Colonel!" called one of the returning soldiers, and Hawkeye ran to the edge of the ridge to assess the situation.

They came clambering back up the snow and rock. One of them had taken off his coat and they carried it between them. Roy watched them haul themselves carefully up over the edge, getting assistance from the soldiers still upon the ridge in dragging the laden coat up to where the jeeps waited.

If it hadn't been for Lust's anxiety, Roy might have assumed that one of the soldiers had been shot and was being hauled back in the makeshift sling. However, because Lust was staring that way, twitching as if unable to decide if he wanted to remain beside Roy or bolt for safety, Roy knew. He knew whose white arm was extended up over his head beyond the collar of the coat, hand falling limply toward the snow. He knew whose boots those were, trailing behind.

He watched, and felt numb inside.

Edward didn't move, said nothing. The soldiers did their best to keep him off the snow. He was wrapped in the black overcoat but was shirtless beneath that; although his eyes were half-open, he focused on nothing, and seemed to not even be conscious.

The senior of the two guards that Hawkeye had sent off originally was giving her a short report, and Roy only half listened to it as Edward was quickly loaded into one of the jeeps. Drachmen soldiers, Edward apparently already unconscious, bound between two trees in the darkness of the forest to freeze to death ... Edward's blue lips and bloodless skin were burned into Roy's vision as Hawkeye listened and told the men that they'd done the right thing in bringing him back.

"Sir," said Hawkeye, and Roy startled, unsure of when she'd gotten beside his jeep. The vehicle with Edward was leaving, heading back toward camp. "You should finish the survey."

Finish. Yes. Roy turned back around, facing forward in the jeep, although all of his attention was behind him in the jeep with Edward. "Of course," he said, and it shocked him how normal his voice came out sounding. "Colonel, please continue."

Hobbs was more than happy to do so. "Both of the mountains are reported as being sufficiently stable for the other prong of the attack. The one on the east there, as you can see ..."

As Edward was driven away, Lust's agitation smoothed off, and the homunculus went up onto the back of the jeep again. He kept a hand on Roy's shoulder, and Roy raised his own hand to Lust's, just to feel him there. With Hobbs droning on, Roy could afford a moment to deal with this, to sort out the bleak and yawning fear that he absolutely could not allow himself to have for Edward. A moment to partition his feelings away so that it would not get in his way.

Edward was not the only person whose life was in his hands, after all. Roy raised the binoculars again, and nothing of the serene beauty of the land around him could touch him now.


	9. burned in the hall of the high god

Lust remained in the corner of the war room all through the meeting. Roy glanced that way occasionally, just to make sure the homunculus was still there, because the creature was being uncharacteristically quiet.

The war room had begun its life as a family gathering place in the first level of the house. It was a comfortable enough room, paneled in wood to conceal the walls, warmed by the house's large central fireplace, and since it was the single largest space in the building it had seemed almost natural to turn it into the main planning area. There were nails in the paneling where more of those crude paintings had once hung, but they were all gone now. Roy had no idea what had happened to them.

He felt a little bad sometimes about the way his soldiers had damaged the house during their stay here.

Most of the alchemists stood around the table, arguing amongst themselves whether or not Roy's demands on them were actually feasible; Roy knew that it was, but letting them convince each other was easier than trying to convince them himself. It would have been difficult to seem sufficiently commanding, anyway, confined to one of the room's few chairs and unable to stand for more than a minute or so without Lust's help.

The firelight turned the homunculus' tainted eyes to gold as Lust leaned against the wall and watched the gathered alchemists.

It amused Roy to remember that Lust knew more about alchemy than most of the human alchemists throwing around theory at the table. He more than half-expected the homunculus to slink over to the table and begin to slyly correct them when their assumptions went astray, with Edward's voice and Edward's lack of patience with incompetence, but Lust never moved from the corner.

It was only when Roy told the alchemists to leave, get some sleep and think about it, that Lust came out of the corner. He said nothing, however; the creature solicitously arranged another of the table chairs in front of Roy so that he could prop his injured leg up onto it, and then went to the fireplace to put on another log without speaking.

"What's the matter?" asked Roy, as the homunculus prodded the coals glowing under the fresh wood with his talons.

Lust did not answer immediately, and when he did, he did not turn around for it. "You're thinking about him all the time now."

Looking away, Roy silently damned Lust's fixation on him, that made the homunculus so perceptive. "I can't help it," Roy said softly. "I'm sorry."

"I can be him for you. I _will_ be him for you." Lust turned around, crouching in front of the fireplace with his claws extended and tapping on the wood floor. "Even if I don't have his soul, I can keep pretending. You're _my_ alchemist. He can't take you away from me." When Roy would have spoken, Lust scraped his claws on the wood and Roy quieted. "I don't want him to die. You're right. And even before you said that, I didn't really want him to die, because ... he's me. I'm him. I can't hate him, and I never did. I tried, and I can't do it."

"Lust ... you're not Edward," said Roy helplessly. "You ... you only look like Edward, the way Edward used to look."

"No," said Lust with a solid kind of certainty. "I am him. Parts of him. He is what I want to be. I'm ... missing some things." The homunculus looked down at the floor, and then back toward the fire. "There are pieces that he has that I don't, but what I do have is his, and that makes me the same person."

Roy could only shake his head. That felt wrong for some reason, despite his own assertions to Lust of this very point not all that long ago. How many times, after all, had he spoken to Lust as if Lust were Edward, and not a unique person in his own right?

How often had Lust spoken back to him the same way, mimicking Edward as best he knew?

Roy had assumed at the time that Edward was dead, but did it really make that much of a difference to know that Edward was actually alive? The homunculus in front of him had not somehow altered ... if Lust had been Edward enough for Roy to address him as such before, he was no less Edward now.

"I don't know what to tell you," said Roy eventually. "I can't give you Edward's soul while Edward is alive, I do know that."

"I know."

"We'll find another way." Roy wanted to go over there, run his fingers through that glinting golden hair, reassure this inexplicable, dangerous creature with touch as well as words. But he couldn't. He couldn't even get up out of this chair without falling.

Abruptly, Lust raised his head, and then scrambled back from the fire. It took only a moment for Roy to realize what that meant, and look toward the doorway.

He felt so tired. He didn't need all this emotional yanking around, not ever, and certainly not now.

"Hi," said Edward, and there was no surprise in his expression that he was anticipated. He was moving slowly and looked ... as tired as Roy felt, if not more so. Extinguished. The hand he raised was bandaged up the fingers. "Can I come in?"

"You missed the meeting," said Roy, but made a come-here gesture anyway. Edward wasn't in uniform, but Roy would have been more surprised if he had been.

"Oh, _damn,_ I missed the _meeting?"_ The animation in Edward's voice was so false, so forced, that Roy wondered why he even bothered. And when the blond took a seat in one of the chairs at the table, he didn't sit so much as fall into the chair. "Well, I should just head right back out because there's sure as hell no point in me coming here if I missed the _meeting."_

"Stop it," said Roy. "Just ... stop it."

Edward gave him a look, and his eyes were flat and unreflective. Then he glanced around, and his gaze finally fixed on Lust in the corner on the other side of Roy. "Hey, Lust." When Lust remained crumpled in the corner, Edward extended his automail hand and wiggled his fingers, the way one might try to coax a timid pet. "I'm not going to hurt you. Come over here."

"Leave him alone," said Roy. He'd been dealing with colonels and lieutenant colonels all day, and alchemists all evening. Whatever games Edward wanted to play with Lust were just not something he could tolerate ... it was bad enough that Edward was even here in the first place, wearing Roy down just by his presence.

"I'm tired of it running away from me. It can get a lot closer to me than that and not freeze up. I saw homunculi do some limited things while actually in contact with pieces of themselves, and there's no reason your Lust can't, too." Edward beckoned with his fingers again, and said, "Come here. Come on. I swear I'm not going to hurt you."

The way Edward was addressing Lust, as if the homunculus were some kind of half-intelligent animal, was annoying. "Why did you come here, Edward?" asked Roy.

Abandoning his efforts to coax Lust, Edward dropped his hand. "You invited me," he said, frowning. "You said you had scotch, or did you not really mean that?"

So that was it. Roy allowed a slight twitch of his lips to show. "I meant it," he said. "It's upstairs."

"Do you want me to go find it?"

 _Yes,_ Roy wanted to say. _Go bring it down. Don't make me try to climb stairs in addition to having to look at you and feel like I'm betraying a homunculus who was born with your face._ But he didn't. "No," he said. "I need to get up there myself eventually. Lust?"

"I can't," the homunculus whispered.

"Sure you can," Edward told Lust. "Other homunculi have done it. Come on, don't you dare look like _me_ and huddle in a corner, because that's just embarrassing. Get up and come over here. Just make yourself do it."

Lust did not answer. "Lust," said Roy softly. "Come here. Please."

"I _can't,"_ hissed the creature.

"Fuck it," said Edward. "I'll get you upstairs. It can't be that hard, I could probably just carry you."

Roy raised one arm so that Edward could help pull him upright. All the enforced indolence was making even his good leg misbehave, and he wobbled once standing. It was depressing to think of himself as having a "good" leg and a "bad" leg anyway. "I doubt you could just carry me," said Roy dryly. "You never did get any bigger."

"Yeah? Well you haven't gotten any more clever." Edward steadied Roy with his automail, and said around Roy, "You know, Lust, if you feel that strongly about it, you could always just come over here and do it yourself."

Half-disappointed that Edward had apparently gotten less sensitive about his height, and half-proud that Edward had finally learned how to be less sensitive about his height, Roy turned to catch Lust giving Edward the most lethal glare that Roy had ever seen. The homunculus' talons were sharp against the floor.

"Lust," he said, and immediately the creature whined pitifully. Roy shook his head. "He isn't going to do it. Go over there, Edward, and let him help me."

Muttering something under his breath that Roy could not catch, Edward got Roy braced against the table, and left the room entirely. Roy was afraid for a moment that Edward was leaving the house through the back door, but then the loud clomping on the stairs told him that Edward was merely preceding him up to the second level.

"I don't like it when he makes me leave you," whispered Lust as his hands wrapped around Roy's arm, strong and sure and providing a crutch for Roy to take his weight off his leg.

"He knows a lot about homunculi, though," said Roy, hobbling carefully toward the far door and the stairs. Walking was getting less painful, but no easier, and there was a disturbing lack of sensation in a long patch down the outside of his injured thigh. Roy had been told shortly after he'd been shot that he'd taken nerve damage and might never walk correctly again, but he was only beginning to appreciate what exactly that meant. "If he says you could come closer to him, you probably could."

"He doesn't like me."

Roy paused in the doorway to lean over and lightly kiss the top of the creature's head. "He wouldn't hurt you. That's not the kind of person he is."

And, unexpectedly, Lust agreed with that. "I know."

Upstairs, Edward was crouching near the bed, examining the unmarked maps and photographs of the pass that Roy had spread out on the floor. "You sleep with this stuff?" he asked as Roy came into the doorway, reaching out to move one of the photos closer.

"Well, I am trying to fight a war here, Edward." Roy had to pause in the doorway because Lust did, and he gave the homunculus time to decide what he was going to do. "Did you know that we have skirmishes around the perimeter almost every night?"

Lust took a deep breath, a gesture that was unnecessary for him and was disturbingly human. Then he seemed to gather himself and force himself into the room, helping Roy stumble to the bed. Edward watched the homunculus critically, and moved aside as the strength seemed to go out of Lust as he got too close.

Once Roy was close enough to the bed to sit down on it, Lust retreated to the doorway again, making anguished little sounds.

"I can't believe you keep that thing around," said Edward, walking toward the door to peer out at Lust. "You can't trust it. It'll turn on you someday."

The last thing Roy wanted to talk about, really, was Lust. "All the glasses are downstairs," he said, pulling his travelling case up from the floor and into his lap to open it; the bottle of scotch was one of the few things still left in it. "You can go get us a couple, or ..."

An automail hand was extended toward Roy immediately. "I don't mind if you don't. Hand it here."

Edward knocked back the bottle like a pro, barely choked at all on the liquor, and offered it back to Roy. He sat down on the floor with his back against the bedside dresser, and examined his bandaged fingers silently.

The ritual required Roy to drink as well, and he put the bottle down on the floor between them once he had. That done, he moved to sit up against the headboard, and pulled his aching leg up so he could stretch it out across the bed. "What happened?" he asked, since Edward didn't seem inclined to say anything, and when gold eyes flicked up toward him questioningly, he waved a hand vaguely. "To your fingers."

"Oh," said Edward. "Frostbite. It isn't too bad, it's just ugly and it's damned painful." He paused, and then said with a slightly defensive tone, "I got what you needed. I told Havok. It was _not_ a waste of time and a stupid risk to my life."

"I never said it was." Roy had read Havok's report on what Edward had delivered upon waking up ... the arrangement of the Drachman army around the town and _not_ within it as Roy had feared ... the location and types of armor ... the size of the force itself. Roy would have gone ahead without any of that, because he had no choice, but having it made him feel a lot more confident about the overall plan of attack. "They were going to kill you."

"Yeah," said Edward, reaching for the scotch again. The look on his face was apathetic as he tilted up the bottle to his lips.

"They didn't try to kill you the first time."

"It's something about Drachman culture. They don't like liars. I'd told them I wasn't a spy when they arrested me the first time, and when they caught me the second time I was definitely spying so obviously I'd been lying to them the first time." He offered the scotch back to Roy, who accepted it and drank from it.

It was probably his imagination, but the lip of the bottle seemed to taste like Edward.

"And they wanted to make sure we found your body," said Roy softly. An effort to demoralize, no doubt.

Edward shrugged. "I got what Havok wanted."

"Edward ..." Roy hesitated, not sure what to say. All resemblance that this young man had to the Edward Elric of his memory seemed to be coincidental. That Edward had never been so careless with his life, and would _never_ have been willing to throw it away for a cause in which he didn't even believe. That Edward had never spoken in such a dead tone of voice. Changing what he'd wanted to say, Roy looked away from the hard-voiced blond on the floor. "Will the frostbite interfere with your alchemy?"

"Of course not." Edward rolled his eyes.

"How good are you with sustained transmutations these days?"

That earned Roy a sidelong look. "What do you mean?" asked Edward

"Could you keep up a transmutation for, say, a couple of hours at a time?"

Edward took another long sip out of the bottle of scotch and pulled one knee up. "Would depend on what it is. Are you going to tell me or make me play twenty-questions?"

Roy gestured to the maps around Edward's feet. "Do you think you could drive a tunnel straight through the base of one of those mountains?"

One golden eyebrow twitched upward as Edward glanced toward the maps, and then he abruptly leaned over to pounce on the biggest map of the pass. "Right through the center?" The paper crinkled as Edward pulled it up into his lap.

"Sort of, yes. Well, not quite."

"... you're going to attack them by going under the mountain?" As a distraction, this seemed to be succeeding; some of the bleakness was leaving of Edward's voice now, supplanted by disbelief and creeping note of curiosity, but there was still a dullness to his tone that Roy didn't like.

"That's part of it, yes," said Roy. "It's more complicated than that, but there will be three divisions, each in their own tunnels with their own alchemists, going through the mountain itself during the attack. I'd like you to be part of that."

Edward took another drink of scotch as he examined the map. "This must be fifteen or twenty miles long. You're insane."

Roy leaned down to grab the bottle right out of Edward's hand to drink some of it himself. The scotch was over half gone already ... Edward was really hitting it hard, and it was already showing in the flush of color in the blond's cheeks. "I could order you," said Roy.

"And I could tell you where to shove your orders. This is _crazy."_

"I wasn't asking for an editorial. I was asking if you could do it."

Edward scoffed again as he pushed the map back onto the floor. "Of course I could do it."

"By yourself? In one shot?"

None of the other alchemists had been confident on this point, and neither was Edward. "Yeeeeea ... maybe. No. I'd need another alchemist to keep the air clean. I don't think I could do both at once, not for twenty fucking miles with passengers."

Roy smiled and handed the bottle back when Edward raised his bandaged hand for it. "You'll have two. It's actually more like twelve miles."

"That's still a long way."

"The others will be backups, if you get tired they can take over."

The glint of annoyance in Edward's eyes as he glared at Roy was familiar, and the first light of _life_ that Roy had seen all night. "I told you I could do it, you bastard. I don't need any fucking backups."

"It's better to have them and not need them." Roy began to unbutton his uniform; the alcohol was warming him. "Do you know if the Drachmen have alchemists with them?"

To Roy's utter surprise, Edward gave him an odd look, and then rolled over onto his knees by the side of the bed, and began helping him with the uniform jacket. "Of course they do. The people in Velastok are terrified. They know that you were the Flame Alchemist and they're expecting you to burn the town and kill them all."

The uniform jacket came off under Edward's hands. "I wouldn't do that," said Roy, although he knew that he _would,_ if doing so would keep his own soldiers alive. And, when Edward began to work on the buttons of his shirt, bandaged fingertips and automail, Roy added, "What are you doing?"

There was no slur in Edward's words, no clumsiness in his motions, but the little smile told Roy all he needed to know about the state of Edward's sobriety. "I didn't expect you to get old," said Edward.

"Don't be ridiculous," said Roy. "I'm not even forty. That's hardly old. And what about this?" He brushed the backs of his fingers down the edge of Edward's jaw, and the line of bristly hair that Edward had yet to shave, and apparently intended to keep. "I didn't expect you to grow a beard."

That light, that _life,_ came back to Edward's eyes briefly, although it didn't seem to be from annoyance this time. "Didn't think I had it in me? It took a while before I started having to shave, and then I thought ... why not? It looked good on the old man." Edward folded Roy's shirt open, and Roy had been given enough warning that there was no surprise in the feeling of roughly-bandaged fingers whispering over his belly.

Edward might have finally turned into an adult, but he obviously hadn't quite yet learned how to hold his liquor. Roy grabbed the exploring hand by the wrist. "You're drunk," he said gently.

"Yeah. I want to be. I want to stay drunk." And to this effect, Edward picked up the bottle again, and once he'd swigged another mouthful out of it, he offered the bottle to Roy.

There was no chance of a similar intoxication for Roy, not with the amount Edward was drinking, but he sipped some of the scotch anyway before putting the bottle back on the floor, because that was the way the ritual worked. And, because Edward was too drunk to care, Roy reached up and ran his fingers through the hair hanging in Edward's face.

He wanted to ask where Edward had been all this time, tell his once-lover that he'd missed him. Confess that he'd loved Edward all along, and apologize for having never said it, for having made Edward believe that it wasn't so. It wasn't the right time ... any of those things might make Edward think of his brother, and Roy didn't want to inject that kind of trauma into Edward's mind while he was drunk.

It was never the right time.

So he smiled a little and asked, "How do you play twenty-questions?"

The bright grin that Edward offered him made him ache; he'd thought he'd never see it again. "It's a parlor game," said Edward. "All your friends sit around and ask you questions trying to guess the answer. It's really stupid." He chuckled a little, and turned his face toward Roy's fingers.

That made no sense at all to Roy, and he played with the ends of Edward's hair; the rest of it was bound, as it usually was, back into a long ponytail. "What's the answer?" he inquired softly.

"Whatever I want it to be. You're supposed to guess it, but you can ask me questions. Only yes-or-no questions though. And you have to guess in less than twenty questions."

"I see." Roy supposed this must be a Drachman game, and he wondered if the people in the town at the end of the pass were playing it now. Edward's hair was coarse and thick under his fingers, exactly like Lust's; it had the same wiry stiffness, the same faint hint of curl. Edward hadn't said why he'd decided to grow it out so long, but Roy wanted to feel all that hair under his hands, find out how much a yard of hair could weigh.

"I'm thinking about kissing you," said Edward suddenly.

Roy shook his head, and moved his fingers to brush Edward's lips. "You're drunk," he said.

"Yes." Edward's lips moved against Roy's fingers, as soft as they ever were in Roy's dreams. "I'm thinking about kissing you and you're not going to let me, are you?"

Even if Lust hadn't been right outside the door, watching and listening to everything, Roy would have still shaken his head and said, "No, I'm not." He moved his fingers from Edward's lips across his cheek, and back up into his hair. "Don't do anything you'll regret later, Edward."

Those bandaged fingers touched Roy's belly again, but the motion wasn't a caress the way the first one had been. "I hated you for so long," said Edward quietly. "You let me ... You should have stopped me. But it wasn't really your job to stop me, was it?"

On this point, Roy wasn't very clear himself. He'd given in to Edward's demands, Edward's beautiful body and his own desire, but should he have said no? Was it his responsibility, back then, to make sure that Edward's wildness was reined in so that the boy didn't hurt himself? Sometimes Roy was inclined to say yes, and sometimes no, and he couldn't make up his mind.

"I don't know," he said.

"I do know." That secretive, drunken little smile was on Edward's lips again as the blond turned to kiss Roy's fingers. "I wanted to be an adult. I wanted, wanted to be ... responsible for myself. For my sins. I can't ..." He broke off, and frowned a bit. "What was I saying?"

Roy palmed his hand over Edward's head, the way he sometimes touched Lust, petting the way he might pet an animal. "You should sleep in one of the other bedrooms," he said. "No one sleeps in the house except me, and there are other rooms."

"No." Before Roy really knew what was happening, Edward was crawling up onto the bed, hands on either side of Roy's body, clumsily trying to straddle Roy's lap. "I want you."

"Edward." Roy reached to take Edward's hand and crushed the fingers together. Edward made a soft sound of surprise and pain and looked up at him, distracted. "No, Edward." In trying to get into Roy's lap, Edward's knee had struck Roy in the side of the thigh, and he gritted his teeth against how much that hurt. "Not while you're drunk. We'll talk about this in the morning, okay?"

"I want you _now,_ though," said Edward petulantly, and kissed Roy on the collarbone. "I can't feel anything. I want to feel something."

Roy wanted to. He wanted to taste those lips, feel those mismatched hands on him, and have the heat of the erection he could feel against his thigh inside him. But more than that, he wanted to pull Edward against him, and just hold him tightly. "No," said Roy softly.

With a long, groaning sound, Edward pulled his injured hand out of Roy's grasp and all but fell back onto the floor. He hit hard, but didn't seem to mind that much because he didn't say anything, and just flopped down, limbs sprawling. "Because you have that thing to fuck now," he said, and he didn't sound very angry on this topic.

"Lust isn't just a thing, Edward. And he isn't just half a duplicate of you." Roy couldn't see Lust in the doorway, but he knew the homunculus was there, in the darkness of the hallway. "He's been with me a long time."

"Hmmm." There wasn't any more from Edward after that. A few minutes later, when Roy glanced down to the floor, the younger man appeared to be asleep.

Roy capped the bottle of scotch and tucked it between the bed and the dresser, where it wouldn't be knocked over easily. It was only then that Lust slid into the doorway, eyeing Edward on the floor warily.

"Come in," said Roy. "Close the door."

"He's still here," said Lust.

"I know. He's asleep. Come in, and close the door."

After more hesitation, Lust did so, pressing himself against the closed door once it was shut. "You should fuck him," said Lust quietly, eyes fixed on Edward.

Startled, Roy gave the homunculus a hard look. "Why?"

"You want him. He would make you happy. I was never able to."

Roy just stared, as Lust creeped along the wall under the crude framed paintings, circling the room as far away from the sleeping blond as possible. He'd expected ... well, he wasn't sure what he'd expected. Jealousy maybe, like what the homunculus had begun to display earlier in the war room. Only worse, because Edward had all but assaulted him. "I wouldn't do that to you, Lust."

"You've already done it. Every time you touch me, you're touching him anyway." Circling the room along the wall, Lust finally came around to the bed and hopped up onto it, crouching at the foot. "You never wanted me, you always wanted him. And now you have him, and you should take him. He wants you."

All Roy could do was shake his head in denial. Lust wasn't even human. He had no soul and felt no kinship toward humanity; were he to ever shake loose of Roy's control, he would be deadly. He felt nothing at all after killing a person, not even the deadness that a hardened soldier felt ... to Lust, snuffing out a life was of no more consequence than blinking.

It shouldn't feel this wrong to listen to him urge Roy toward Edward.

"I can't do that," said Roy. "What's gotten into you?"

"Nothing. Do you want me to help you get undressed? You can't sleep like that."

Roy said nothing, and Lust evidently took that as assent because presently the homunculus crawled across the bed and began to help Roy strip down. Beside the bed, Edward gave a sleepy murmur, and Lust froze for a moment before resuming.

"He really shouldn't sleep on the floor," said Roy, more for something to say than any other reason. Lust ... wanting him to sleep with Edward. Preposterous!

"Mmmm. I can't carry him anywhere," said Lust.

"I can't either." Roy glanced toward Edward, who had one hand on his belly and all his other limbs spread out carelessly, a tiny smile on his lips. If nothing else, the scotch was at least letting the younger man sleep peacefully.

Lust smiled, and he was still carefully watching Edward, as if the blond man might suddenly turn into a viper. "Don't be sorry, Colonel," he said. "This is what we wanted all along, isn't it? For you to have him back again."

"And what about you?"

The homunculus' muddy eyes flicked up to Roy's face for a moment, and then back down to the man on the floor. "You said it yourself. We'll find another way." And then the creature's smile became darker, and he added, "Having memory problems already?"

The barb felt as false as Edward's earlier jibing had, and Roy was silent for a moment before looking away. "Right. We'll find another way."


	10. bursting his fetters, Fenris runs

He lounged in the doorway to the war room, loitering as his alchemist argued with some of the other soldiers. All this talk of fighting and such bored him, because it was nothing that had anything to do with him ... the only part of it that interested him was the Array, and that was already being dealt with, or so his alchemist said. And he had no reason to disbelieve it.

He could hear the footsteps of the humans outside, smell gasoline right through the walls as they moved their vehicles around for reasons that didn't concern him. They were always busy, always doing things. He tracked their comings and goings through the sounds they made, as he let his mind wander. Generally, it wandered to sex when he didn't have anything better to think about ... but he hadn't had sex in way too long, since before someone had dared to injure his alchemist, and he was still furious about that if he let himself think about it too much. He could catch himself raking the innocent air with his claws if he dwelled on that. So he tried to think of something different ... the Array maybe, or how stupid human alchemists could be. Ridiculous, that he knew more about their own art than they did sometimes.

Voices rose in annoyance, and he glanced into the war room for a moment, and then looked away again, bored almost immediately by their argument. They would never hurt his alchemist, he knew. There was no need for top alertness when his alchemist was indoors and surrounded by soldiers that he recognized. Around strangers, even strangers in blue uniforms, it was different, but he knew these ones to be harmless. He kept an ear open anyway, monitoring the tone of the argument more than the content, but there was no hint of impending violence in the sounds.

Idly, he extended a talon and began to bore a hole in the other side of the door jamb.

The feeling crept up on him gradually, starting as just a vague sense of uneasiness, and then growing more. He didn't know how long the feeling had been there, exactly, because he'd been feeling it for a little while before it became enough to impinge on his consciousness. He knew what it was, of course, the moment his attention was drawn to it.

That _emptiness,_ that quiver in the pit of his belly, that betrayed _his_ presence. He looked over toward the front door apprehensively, both fearful and hopeful that _he_ might decide to come in. For surely _he_ was out there, somewhere nearby. But, after a moment, the feeling began to fade.

Before he even knew what he was doing, he was slinking away from the war room, toward the door of the house.

Outside, the air was cold and it smoothed over his face like a caress as he peered around. _He_ was nowhere in sight, but that _emptiness_ was still there although it was less now, a gnawing feeling down deep in the hollow of his pelvis.

He shouldn't leave his alchemist. There was no one in the house that could cause injury, but anyone could come in despite the human guards at the door ... humans were unpredictable like that. He'd guarded his alchemist faithfully for years now, keeping the man from all harm before _he_ arrived, and he shouldn't give that up now.

But _he_ was nearby, repulsive and alluring in equal measure. And what would be the harm, really? It would only be for a moment.

The snow was soft on his toes as he padded through the camp, the wind softer against his skin as he searched this way and that. The smell of gasoline was stronger now, eddying on the cold air, as were the smells of food and waste, and the oily smell of the humans themselves, left on everything they touched. _He_ was a pull, a draw on the _emptiness_ that he could feel, and track with a little effort. Go this way, it became less, go that way ...

Once he was headed the correct direction, it became easy to catch sight of _him,_ moving through the crowds of blue-uniformed humans, the only one not in a blue uniform. Some of the humans spoke to him, but none of them were worth his attention. Only _he_ mattered, walking ahead of him, hair like saffron down the back of the brown coat _he_ wore.

He should be afraid of _him,_ hate _him,_ something ... something other than this fascination that made him trail along behind _him_ in the muddy snow. He didn't understand it, and didn't really try ... the feeling was there, it existed, and that was all he needed to know. Not everything needed to be understood to be valid.

 _He_ was moving out of the camp, and he knew this to be dangerous ... there was fighting sometimes outside the camp, and it was good that his alchemist remained inside most of the time. He would protect _him_ if necessary, but he hoped it wouldn't be necessary, since he couldn't get too close without being overwhelmed. Could he even get his claws close enough to _him_ to intercept a projectile? He didn't know, and decided to find out.

He flicked out one claw, targeting a spot which was a comfortable yard away from _him,_ and was relieved when he was able to reach that easily. Another attempt got him a little closer, and a third within two feet. Well, this was all right. He knew that he couldn't touch _him_ at all, even with the tips of his talons, but apparently he could get his claws as close as he wanted.

And he could get himself pretty close as well, as long as _he_ was quiet. He was only a few yards back now, able to smell the scent of _his_ skin when the wind turned correctly, a smell that made him yearn for things he hadn't even known he'd been missing.

"What ... are you doing?"

It all happened in a moment ... _his_ Voice shattered him, and he went to his knees, and at the same time _he_ was turning around to face him. They were near the perimeter now, still within the area patrolled by the soldiers but outside the camp proper, among the stubs of trees which had been cut down for the needs of the army.

"If you're trying to see if you can kill me, give it up. What are you even doing out here anyway?"

Closer. _He_ was coming closer, footsteps crunching in the snow, and he wanted to get to his feet and draw back, away from that yawning, terrifying _emptiness_ inside him. But _his_ Voice was paralyzing him, riveting him to the spot for as long as _he_ was speaking. He was too close already, too close.

A hand landed on his head, and he surrendered as his muscles locked completely. That _emptiness_ inside of him screamed, ached, expanded until he could feel nothing else, and he knew now that _he_ was not the cause of it ... it was always there, screaming inside him, but he could only hear it when _he_ was nearby. Only feel it when _he_ was there to show him what he was missing.

It was like being touched by the sun.

"You're pretty pathetic," _he_ was saying, and _his_ hand was stroking his hair, holding him to the ground with no effort at all. That scent was all around him now, warm and terrifying, breathed out in the clouds of moisture that _he_ exhaled. "You can talk to me if you want to so badly, you know. I'm not going to hurt you, no matter how much I might want to."

Talk to _him?_ He just stared upwards for a moment. He'd never spoken to anyone but his alchemist, not since his alchemist had, in a fit of anger after he'd propositioned one too many humans, told him to stop talking to other humans. And eventually most humans had stopped talking to him as well, and it was only the strangers who did it now, but ... perhaps it would be all right to talk to _him._ This was _him_ after all, and surely the injunction couldn't extend to _him._

Making his jaw and tongue work, however, took him a couple of tries. "I ... I ..."

"Come on. You can do it. Just make yourself do it."

His muscles were frozen, and his body was relaxed into that, resigned to its own helplessness, and it took a monumental effort to overcome that. From the way _he_ spoke, it should have been so easy, but it wasn't. "I ... c-c-c-c ..." One of his talons twitched, completely beyond his control.

"Yes, you can. Come on, this is pitiful. What in the hell were you following me for?"

The hand on his head moved under his chin, forcing him to look up, and _his_ eyes were so bright, so pure, that the _empty_ place inside him withered and crawled under the force of them. He wanted to throw his arms around _his_ neck, and whisper, _I missed you, I missed you so much._

But in a way, the cutting brilliance of _his_ gaze was calming, gave him something to focus on that wasn't the _emptiness_ throwing cold arms around his heart. He touched his teeth with his tongue, and attempted to center himself for another try, and _he_ waited patiently for it.

"I ... d-d-don't know ... d-d-dang-g-gerous ... here ..."

"Yeah, especially with you shooting your claws out at me. That doesn't answer why you were following me though."

How to respond to that? How to explain the way _he_ pulled on him? As if _he_ were the most important thing in the world? He tried to speak again, and only managed soft, strangled noises. After a few moments more of patient waiting, _he_ made a disgusted sound, and the hand dropped from his chin. The sun moved, went around him, and began to walk away back toward the camp.

"Wait," he said, his body melting out of the lock-up once _his_ touch was gone. "Wait."

"Why?"

The cold snow was biting into the skin of his knees and feet, but it was easier now ... if he remained down, with _him_ behind his back, it was easier to shield himself, protect that _emptiness_ from the force of what he didn't have within it. But the question was a good one. "... I don't know."

The footsteps returned, and he shivered, but _he_ refrained from touching him this time. "You're really weird. You sure as hell have Mustang snowed, but I don't get you at all. What are you up to?"

What could _he_ mean by that? "I ... want to be human," he said, taking a guess.

"Yeah, I've heard that before. And just how do you propose going about that? I think it's obvious by now that you're not getting my soul, and you'd need a Stone for that anyway. And if Mustang had a Stone I'm sure he wouldn't be sitting here like a knot on a log trying to take this pass the hard way. So I ask you again, what are you up to?"

Ahh, _he_ was asking about an ulterior motive. He relaxed a little, and said again, more confident now, "I want to be human. That's all. Colonel said he would help me, so I watch over him. No one else would want to, so I have to keep him alive."

Footsteps approached, and he cringed down a little, but resisted the urge to get up and retreat. No touch landed on his back or head, but _his_ Voice, when _he_ spoke, was lit with anger. "And just what makes you think you deserve to be human?"

That gave him pause, because he'd never thought about it. Never questioned his right to have what everyone around him had ... a soul, a life, something more than a parody. His alchemist had certainly never questioned this. "I ... why wouldn't I?"

He yelped a little, and fell back on his rear as _he_ came around in front of him again, and stood over him with such fury on _his_ face that he wanted to cry. "You're an abomination. You're a mistake. The fact that you look like me doesn't change that, you know. You should never have been born, you should never have been given as much life as you were, and rather than be happy with that, you want more. You want ... more."

"I d-deserve more," he stuttered, finding it hard to speak again, not with _him_ shining down on him so brightly, throwing the shadowed places inside him into terror. That _emptiness,_ screaming inside him to be filled, that hollowness that ached because it was hollow, reached out for _him_ because _he_ had in such obscene excess what he lacked completely, and needed so badly.

"Why? Why do you think you deserve more than you have, when you didn't deserve this much in the first place?"

The sky was so bright around _him,_ white and blinding, and he wanted to put a hand over his eyes but could barely move. "It ... hurts," he whispered.

For a moment, _his_ expression flickered, from anger to something else, but then _he_ frowned again. "You killed my brother. Who gives a shit if you hurt?"

Flicking back through his memories of every human he'd killed, he couldn't remember anyone who looked like _him._ Brothers usually resembled each other, in his experience. At least a little bit. "No," he said, after a moment.

"Yes." He cringed back a little as a hand reached for him, but then _he_ apparently thought better of it, and straightened again without touching him. "Yes, you did. He died making you, all the life that went into you came out of him. If you think I'll ever forgive you for that, you're even more pathetic than I'd thought."

The memories of his birth were weak ones, almost as weak as his memories of Before, and he flipped through those as well for the face of any humans he might have killed the process. He remembered light, a howling sound, a burning agony in each bit of his flesh as it was constructed, a searing in his mind as he was branded by the alchemy, and then the sound and light stopped and there was only the agony of the air touching him everywhere, the agony of his body touching itself. Then his alchemist, except that the human wasn't his alchemist yet then, speaking to him, words he knew to be words but didn't understand.

There was no memory of anyone dying. Unless it was himself. "I didn't," he said.

"You did." _His_ Voice was cold now, colder than the ground against his backside, and it burned the _emptiness_ inside him to know that, somehow, he'd brought this anger to _him._ "You killed him when he created you, and I hate you for that. You don't even deserve to be alive, much less to be human."

How could he defend against that? Against a murder he didn't even recall committing? How could he deny anything _he_ said, in that tone that brooked no argument?

How could he defend his right to live, his right to be whole? He'd never expected to need to, and had never before raised any defense of this. Simply knowing that the right existed, just feeling it, wasn't sufficient. Not in the face of that rage.

After a moment, _he_ snorted and said, "I won't hurt you, though. Not even though you're my brother's killer. Not even though you're an aberration and a perversion, because Mustang seems to like you and I won't do that to him. That's what makes me human, and you something less."

With that, _he_ began to walk away once more. With _his_ retreat, no longer right in front of him, moving became easier. Thinking became easier.

"I can't ..." he said, and when the footsteps paused, he cleared his throat and began again. "I can't ... regret ..." How to put it into words. "I can't regret what happened, that caused me to be born."

A moment of silence, and then, "That's why you'll never be me."

He didn't say anything more, not even to keep _him_ from walking away. He remained where he was, among the slaughtered trees and snow, and wondered why the _emptiness_ inside him wasn't going away this time, now that _he_ was no longer nearby.


	11. out of the foam, fair and green

Roy sat on the meeting room couch, after Lust arranged the maps on the table so that he could reach them. With all of the details finally hammered out in the final command staff meeting with the alchemist division, he marked the largest map with an inadequate pen.

A winged swirl for the array, already in place in the pass, drawn in wire just under the surface of the earth.

Numerous X's for the various divisions of armor, with arrows to show where they would be passing. Most of them were already in place as well. It was impossible to believe that the Drachmen hadn't noticed, and so Roy estimated where they would encounter resistance with wavy lines.

Even more arrows for infantry.

Stars for the alchemists and their attack groups, and dotted lines for where they needed to go. Once inside the mountain, it would be difficult for them to navigate. Coming out the other side too high would be almost as disastrous as not slanting up enough, and missing the surface of the ground altogether. Roy was providing each attack group with engineers to guide the alchemists, even though alchemists and engineers rarely got along well.

They would cooperate if he said they would.

More of the same kind of markings, gone over three times to make them dark, for the known locations of the Drachmen forces. Roy had no idea what the enemy alchemists would be doing, if anything, or even how many there were.

The map gradually became an intricate web of marks, neatly and precisely drawn on both sides of the pass, and all throughout the twisting length of it.

At the end of the pass, the prize: the town, Velastok. A small city, really, population around three hundred thousand, comfortable and wealthy on the trade that had moved through the pass when times were quieter. Sufficient, with alchemical assistance and whatever supply shipments could be forced through the pass, to support his army for the rest of the winter, while Drachma was locked down by snow and ice, and further combat rendered impossible until the thaw.

Cool fingers slid over his shoulder. "Let's go upstairs," whispered Lust. The homunculus had not asked him for sex in days, and tonight wasn't even rubbing up against him, even though they were alone in the room. It was something that both relieved Roy, and bothered him.

"In a bit," said Roy, scratching more spidery marks on the map. It helped to see it. It would help him visualize the assault in his mind tomorrow, to be able to see it there now, marked down in white and gray and black. It wasn't every day that he got the chance to stage a battle on his own terms, and in his own time, and he intended to take advantage of it as much as possible. Rough maps had been sketched for him, and by him, during planning sessions, but this level of detail was something only he cared about, and so he did it by himself.

Eventually he leaned back, raising an arm over his eyes and throwing his injured leg up onto the table in front of him. "This is going to be hard," he said.

"I'll be with you," said Lust, and the furniture slanted under Roy's body as the homunculus crawled toward him. He reached out with his other hand, without looking, and groped around until his hand touched smooth skin, and he followed that up to the creature's head.

"I know," he said, stroking Lust's cheek blindly. "You can't help me with this, though."

"I'll watch over you. I'll protect you."

Roy laughed a little and turned to the side, dropping his arm so that he could look at Lust. "I'm not afraid of getting hurt," he said. "But thank you."

The smile that Lust gave him was so much like Edward's, except that Lust offered it easily and freely. Roy tilted sideways a bit so that he could touch his lips to the homunculus', but when Lust leaned forward to deepen it, he drew back.

"Edward should be coming," he murmured, by way of explanation.

"You think he will?" asked Lust, pulling back as well and crouching on the couch beside Roy. There was no indication that Roy's rejection hurt the thing.

"He'd better. In fact, if he isn't here in another fifteen minutes, I may send a couple of soldiers to come drag him in."

Lust frowned slightly, and glanced off to the side. "You're angry with him."

"You're damned right I am. He doesn't come to meetings. Not even when I order him to. We're attacking tomorrow morning, and I don't even know where he is."

Lust reached up and touched his hair, and then black-gloved fingers slid down the nape of his neck. "If he still wants you when he comes, you should take him."

Which reminded him ... "Yeah, about that." Roy grabbed Lust by the wrist, and kissed the creature's fingers. "I don't understand why you say things like that. What happened? One minute you were saying how he'd never take me away from you, and then the next you were telling me to sleep with him."

There was no change to the homunculus' expression. "I want you to be happy. He would make you happy."

Roy just looked at Lust. If a human lover had told him that, he would have suspected mental illness, or perhaps that his lover was seeing someone else on the side, but this was _Lust._ Lust, who had never minded pretending to be Edward, or being called by Edward's name.

After a moment, he asked, "Why did you change your mind, though?"

"I've always wanted you to be happy."

"Yeah, but ..."

"Am I ... interrupting something?"

With a whimper, Lust drew back, pulling his hand out of Roy's grasp and retreating to the back of the room. Roy turned around.

To his shock, Edward had a uniform jacket on over his civilian clothes, rather than the brown coat he'd been wearing everywhere. True, the jacket was unfastened and hanging loose, but to see Edward even one-third of the way into uniform was a revelation.

"No," said Roy, once he'd shaken off the surprise enough to say something. "Come in."

The door into the kitchen was beside the gray brick which formed the back of the kitchen fireplace and one wall of the room; Lust skittered through the door and into the kitchen as Edward came in.

"What'd you want?" Edward asked, and there was none of the annoyance that Roy had expected at being summoned; in fact, the look that Edward gave him was bored, almost indifferent.

So Roy said, "Sit down. We need to talk about tomorrow."

"What about it?" Edward threw himself into the armchair, the most comfortable chair in the room and virtually the only piece of furniture left, aside from the couch, which had been there when the army had arrived. "I know what I'm supposed to be doing."

"I'm sure you do." Roy glanced down at the map he'd edited; the third star, the one with the longest trek through the interior of the mountain, was Edward. "Edward ... I need to ask you something."

"Yeah?" The tone was lethargic, at best, and Edward was examining the seam on one of his gloves. "I kinda already figured out that you wanted to talk about something, so what is it?"

How to put this, how to put this ... Roy had put a lot of thought into it while waiting, and still hadn't come up with a good way to phrase it. He leaned back, adopting a deliberately relaxed pose with his foot already up on the table to take the strain off his injured leg. "I need to know if you think I can trust you to get all the way through the mountain."

Gold eyes turned on him, and narrowed sharply. "I already told you I could do it. I could give you a demonstration, but not before tomorrow morning."

Roy nodded, and idly rubbed the side of his thigh a bit, on the edge of the zone where he could feel next to nothing. "I believe that you can do it," he said carefully. "That's not ... quite what I'm asking."

A few seconds of silence, and a slow frown that spread across Edward's face. "Oh, you son of a bitch," said Edward. "You can't be serious."

"I have to know."

Even the anger that Edward was able to provide was not entirely up to par; it didn't light in his eyes or smoke in his voice, and felt so false that it broke Roy's heart more thoroughly than an honest breakdown. "You son of a bitch," said Edward again. "If you seriously think that I would deliberately bury a thousand people who are depending on me ..."

Roy raised a hand and said, "I never said that."

"You didn't have to!"

"I have to know, Edward. I have to _know._ Your attack group is the largest, and you have the farthest to go, and I'm trusting you with this because I know that you're the best alchemist we have and you'll make the best time. But you haven't seemed quite ..." Stable? All there? Roy groped for the correct term.

With a disgusted sound, Edward saved him the trouble. "Don't insult me. I mean it. Don't fucking insult me. If I wanted to kill myself, I'd find a better way than to take a whole bunch of innocent people with me. Fuck." The blond man threw himself out of the chair in aggravation, and even his aggravation felt hollow to Roy.

"Come here," said Roy.

"Why?"

With a spark of annoyance of his own, Roy said, "Because I told you to, and I'm your commanding officer."

Turning it into an order apparently took Edward by surprise, and after a pause the younger man moved around the table to come stand by the couch next to Roy. "Yes, sir," he said, and the faint note of anger in his voice was finally, finally genuine.

"Sit," said Roy, and dragged his foot off the table, so he could twist in his seat to face Edward as the blond obeyed. "You can't keep doing this to yourself."

"You don't even have the first idea of what I'm doing to myself. Sir."

"Don't I? Where have you been? None of the other alchemists even know what you look like. Where have you been sleeping?"

The bright glare that Edward had been giving him abruptly darted off toward the wall. "What difference does it make?"

Roy felt his lips thinning; that answer told him everything he needed to know. "Do you even know how to get yourself fed?"

"Is there a point to this?" Edward still wasn't looking at him.

"Yes." Roy grabbed Edward by the chin and forced the other alchemist to look at him. "You're not eating, I'd bet that you're sleeping in the barn again, or I don't know, maybe the supply tent. You cannot, _cannot_ keep doing this to yourself. I can't rely on you if you have a death wish, and do you think it doesn't worry me? Do you think I don't care?"

Automail fingers closed over his wrist, padded by the glove that Edward was wearing, but only slightly. "I. Do not. Have. A death wish."

"No?" Roy released him, but only because the strength of Edward's grip was a warning, and a physical fight wasn't his objective.

Edward dropped Roy's hand as if it were something vile. "No. Not that you've been anxious to give me a new reason to live, with all your cuddling up to my doppelganger and throwing me off to the side."

"Edward ..."

"No. _No._ You'd rather fuck a soulless doll than me. You know what? That's fine. I'm glad I know where I stand, but if you expect me to be happy about that, you have another thing coming. That does not translate into a death wish."

Roy narrowed his eyes. "This is not about Lust, Edward. This is about ..."

"I know what you think it's about. Fuck you."

It would have been easy to be angry. Roy hadn't set out, all those years ago, to take a homunculus lover, and he hadn't intended to betray a man that he had believed to be dead. He'd somehow managed to do both, and while he would take responsibility for it, he wasn't so anxious to take blame for actions that, under the same circumstances, he would do again.

The anger wasn't there, however. It seemed perfectly natural to reach up and thread his fingers through Edward's hair, push it back from the marvelous sneer - which was marvelous because it was _real_ \- and use the grip to tug Edward forward.

To his surprise, Edward bent as Roy wanted him to, spine flexing to allow the younger man to lean far forward without losing his balance. The skin behind his ear was warm under Roy's fingers, _warm_ and slightly oily and not the cool perfection of the homunculus, and Roy wanted to taste it. He wanted to taste _Edward._

"I can't take advantage of you," he whispered.

"... what?" That clearly wasn't what Edward had been expecting, and he blinked at Roy, their noses inches apart.

"You were right, earlier. It was extremely inappropriate for me to do ... what I did when you were fourteen. It would be worse now, when you're ..."

"Oh, fuck," said Edward, drawing back and giving Roy an incredulous stare.

Undeterred, Roy continued, "... when you're emotionally fragile and ..."

Roy felt he could be excused for moving slowly: he'd had a busy day, his leg injury hampered him somewhat, and although the winter night fell early here in the north, it was well after dark and the only light in the room came from lamps in two of the corners. But when he abruptly found himself flat on his back on the couch, with Edward heavily straddling him, excuses counted for nothing in the end.

"You are not doing this to me," said Edward, pinning Roy down by the shoulders.

"I'm not going to take advantage of you," Roy told him.

"You're not fucking taking advantage of me. Okay?" Strands of hair drifted down over Edward's shoulder as the younger man's gaze searched Roy's face, darted wildly down Roy's neck. "I keep ... thinking about you, thinking about you in here, with that thing touching you, and it's driving me crazy. I think about ... the way you smell, I want you to _hold_ me and tell me that ... the world isn't ending."

The pain that Edward had been concealing, wrapping up in indifference, was raw in his eyes when he looked up at Roy's face again, and Roy's hands crept up around Edward's waist. "You keep pushing me away," whispered Edward. "Why do you keep doing that? It's killing me."

Roy could have given him reasons. His relationship with Lust ... Edward's accusations before learning of Alphonse's death ... the way Edward had seemed to want to be alone with his suffering. But none of that mattered now, so he said nothing. His hands met behind Edward's back, and he pulled the younger man down against him.

"You're the only person I have left," whispered Edward against Roy's shoulder. His arms were around Roy's waist, clutching, painful.

Edward's body was so heavy, and not just with the automail ... it was solid and _human,_ bones wrapped in muscle wrapped in skin, and fit against Roy easily. Roy just held him - everything that he'd wanted for nine years, and thought that he would never touch again - and it wasn't until Edward took in a sharp, hitching breath that Roy realized that the younger man was trying not to cry.

"It's okay," he whispered, and one hand moved up, into all that hair, the weight and thickness of it against his fingers, to pull the ponytail tie loose and stroke the back of Edward's head. "It's all right, I didn't mean to push you away. It's okay." Meaningless words.

"He's dead, Roy," said Edward, voice quavering.

"I know, I know." Roy rested his lips against blond hair and rubbed Edward's back through the uniform jacket. "But you're not."

He tightened his hold on Edward, crushing the younger man against him and inhaled the dirty male scent of him. There was nothing he could do, nothing at all. He couldn't soothe Edward's pain, and there was nothing he could say that would make it less.

"Tell me what you need," he whispered, one hand rubbing Edward's back, the other one lost in a cascade of gold.

That only seemed to make it worse. Edward's breath hitched again, and he buried his face more deeply in Roy's shoulder, held onto Roy even more tightly.

Softly, Roy said, "The world isn't ending."

"Tell me ..." Edward's voice broke, and he paused to swallow. "Tell me that the sun will rise in the morning."

A faint smile touched Roy's lips. "The sun will rise in the morning," he said. "And it will be beautiful, over the snow and mountains. And it will rise back home, and people will go about their business, and the world will keep going the way it's always gone for thousands of years."

Another catch in Edward's breathing, and there was no stability at all in his voice when he said, "I'm never going to see him again. I didn't ... get to tell him goodbye."

"I know," whispered Roy, although he knew nothing like that. Meaningless words. "He knew that you loved him, though. You never made that a secret. He knew."

Softly, Edward whispered, "I can't live like this."

Pushing himself more upright, Roy pulled Edward into his lap, careful of the gunshot in his thigh. "No," he said. "You can't. But that doesn't mean you can't live, Edward. Alphonse wouldn't have wanted you to destroy yourself over him."

"It hurts so much. It hurts so much." Edward would not look up. "I feel like I'm going to break."

"You won't. Hey. Hey, look at me." When Edward just rubbed his face against Roy's jacket, Roy nudged a hand under the younger man's chin, and forced his head up. "You won't," Roy told him. "You're not that weak. You're not weak at all. You're going to grieve, and you're going to hurt for a while, but you're not going to break. And after a while, it won't hurt so much."

Edward could not really look away, because Roy had him by the chin, but his eyes slid off to some point over Roy's shoulder. "You're so fucking trite," he murmured.

"You know it's true, though."

Edward's soft bottom lip folded in between his teeth. "Yeah. I know it's true."

Raising his hand to Edward's hair once more, Roy began to stroke it again. It was heavy, and thick, and it slithered everywhere all over his hand. He said nothing further, just ran his fingers through the younger man's hair, rubbed his back and shoulders aimlessly, offering what he could of that ancient solace of human touch. And, eventually, Edward seemed to pull himself together a little, and he moved to sit up.

Roy released him, and somehow was not surprised when Edward reached a hand around behind Roy's neck.

He was not surprised at all when Edward pulled him down to kiss him.

This time, he did not try to stop it.


	12. from the depths below a drake comes flying

Roy pulled Edward down onto the bed with him when he fell into it, and kept his chin tilted up for the younger alchemist's lips. He wanted no break in the contact ... he wanted his skin to burn, his cock to ache, and he above all wanted no time to think about what he was doing.

One strong hand was behind the small of his back, pulling him upward toward his smaller lover, while the other was in his hair, and Edward was pressed so close that Roy was having a hard time getting his own hands between them to loosen clothing. Words were being whispered against his throat, scratched into his skin by the movement of Edward's bristled chin: "... thought about you, you sick fuck, and your body, and how you touched me, ruined me ..." If there was meaning or intent behind them, it was lost on Roy.

Edward knelt over him, on the edge of the bed, pushing Roy down with his body and his lips, groping awkwardly for the edges of Roy's clothing. He was so eager, like an animal. Roy did nothing to hinder him, did not do very much to _help_ him either, because he didn't want to think and Edward was doing a good job of keeping his brain from kicking into gear.

He laid back, fumbled for the catch of Edward's pants, and let his lover maul his clothing and mumble into his skin.

He was still injured, far from being completely healed, but if that was a fact that remained in Edward's mind, the blond gave no indication of it. His uniform jacket was all but torn off by automail fingers, and the shirt he wore beneath lost several buttons; the hard caresses over his skin were bruising. The style of Edward's pants turned out to be foreign, probably Drachman, and difficult to manage, but Roy finally, finally got them open. The blond gasped and writhed as Roy slipped one hand into the gap.

Edward's cock felt different from how he remembered - _different from Lust's_ \- warmer, thicker in his hand, the foreskin sticky with sweat. The words against his throat changed: "... oh, you bastard, yes, oh, fuck ..." and broke off into a breathy moan as Edward thrust against his fingers.

Teeth sank, hard, into his collarbone, and Roy's body bucked up against the blond on top of him. He gasped with pain.

Getting the uniform jacket off of Edward was easy. The dull brown shirt was not so easy, because when Roy released Edward's cock to work on it, he was rewarded by a dark growl and another bite. "Stop it," whispered Roy.

In response to _that,_ Edward grabbed Roy by the wrists and pinned him down, hands on either side of his head. The blond pushed himself up a bit, so that he could look down at Roy.

His eyes were clouded, and there was moisture smeared across his cheeks. There was something unstable about the corner of his mouth.

"I want you," Edward whispered. His hair was everywhere.

It felt good, it felt familiar to be held down like this, even though Edward looked like he was slowly shattering. Roy tried to reach up to brush that hair back, wipe the wetness away and pull Edward back down, but only managed to tug at his wrists. "Kiss me again," Roy whispered back.

Edward did, and it was hard and passionate, and tasted slightly sour but Roy didn't care. Edward's tongue was agile, and he put it to good use in filling Roy's mouth, and in the process silenced himself.

There was no taste of metal, nothing oily in the kiss. There may have been a hint of salt, but that could be forgiven.

When Edward let his wrists go, Roy went back to work on the younger man's clothing, and the shirt soon came off. He wanted to take the gloves off Edward next, but only got the one off the automail; Edward raised his hand out of Roy's reach rather than let the one on his left hand be removed. That was all right. Roy had the clean expanse of Edward's back to touch now, warm smooth skin fixed to the hard muscles beneath. Roy brushed his fingers up between the knotted ridges of muscle on either side of Edward's spine, and made his lover moan into his mouth.

"Oh, fuck," whispered Edward. "Keep doing that."

With Edward's pants unfastened, it was easy to push them down to mid-thigh. Roy stroked his fingers up Edward's back, then dragged the backs of his fingernails down again, flicking a light touch across the base of Edward's spine. The younger man whimpered, but it was an aggressive kind of whimper, accompanied by the unbuckling of Roy's belt and a hard grope up between his legs.

The angle was unwieldy but the touch was demanding, and Roy hissed with sudden pleasure. This was what had been missing from sex with the homunculus, _this_ was what he'd been wanting. This demanding, this taking from him, awkwardness, pleasure granted that was all the more intense because it was bracketed on either side by selfishness. This smell of sweat and artless thrusting against his thigh, and yes, even the grind of pain when Edward got a little careless and his knee got too close to the wound in Roy's leg.

"I want you," whispered Edward again. "I want to feel you. I want to taste you. I want to remember."

All that hair was heavy as Roy forced his fingers into it again, and it was getting tangled as well. He pushed it up out of the way, exposing the side of Edward's face and neck, and began to use his tongue and teeth just behind Edward's ear. His lover groaned against him, ground their hips together, and made more effort to get the rest of Roy's clothes open. Roy's boots clunked onto the floor, and his uniform pants didn't take long to follow.

When Edward slid one arm under Roy's leg, elbow hooking under knee, Roy said, "No."

The fire in Edward's eyes when he drew back was all the more terrible because he looked like he was about to angrily abuse him and cry at the same time. Roy forestalled it by saying, "I got shot. You can't do it like that."

It took a moment for Edward to comprehend, and both the rage and the anguish retreated together, leaving behind only a smear of both emotions. "How then?"

Roy squirmed within Edward's hands, rolling onto his belly. "Oil in the dresser, second drawer," he murmured.

The oil that he and Lust had used. Roy squeezed his eyes shut, and tried not to think about that. Edward needed this. Hell, he needed it himself. And Lust had told him, not two minutes before Edward had shown up, that he should have sex with the younger alchemist should the opportunity present itself. Didn't that make it okay?

However, this wasn't quite how Roy had anticipated his meeting with Edward going. And the lingering twist in his belly was not put there by sexual arousal.

The rattle of the drawer was not sufficient warning, and Roy made a soft sound of mixed surprise and pleasure at the first touch. The fingers that slopped oil onto him and pushed it inside him were rough and invasive, and he moaned into the sheets.

"Fuck me," Roy whispered. His hips jerked, rubbing his erection against the bed, but that didn't stop the ache between his legs.

"Shhhh." Edward's fingers went deep, and Roy closed his eyes. It was easier if he couldn't see.

Edward wasn't sixteen anymore, the way he'd been when they'd last been together ... he wasn't a teenager plundering Roy's body only because Roy let him. The hands that shoved Roy into the mattress by the shoulders were strong and rough. The knees that forced his own to spread, one warm and one cold metal, were irresistible.

The uniform jacket and shirt were removed, yanked off of him, and Roy twisted his arms back to help it along. Hair dripped across his back, dragging through the sweat and smudged oil on his skin, as Edward moved up against the backs of Roy's legs. Even rising a little way up onto his knees put an unwanted amount of pulling pressure on Roy's gunshot wound, but it was bearable. It was bearable, and he wanted it.

"Do it," Roy whispered.

He could feel Edward's breath on his back, Edward's skin sticking to his own as the blond thrust into him. It was too much, too deep and too fast, and Roy bit down on the pain as he was penetrated. But it was over in a moment, and then Edward was taking him, fucking him, in sharp and possessive strokes. The pain went away in increments, and Roy pressed his face into the sheets.

In the past, he'd spread his legs for Edward because Edward was young and needed to be in control, and Roy was older and knew that taking a cock into his body didn't make him weak. He wasn't sure what made him do it this time - perhaps nothing more significant than habit - but it felt good, it felt right. Familiar and something else, something he could never have named.

He was pretty sure that the roughness of Edward's breathing meant that his lover was dripping tears onto his back, where they could disappear, unremarked, into the sweat on his skin. Roy pulled a little of the blanket between his teeth and bit down onto it. His body swayed, rocked by Edward's sexual violence; the moving pressure of Edward's cock sent jagged nails of pleasure up through Roy's genitals. He was obligated to slide a hand between his legs to massage his own cock, but that was all right. The pain and awkwardness were fine, the way Edward was just taking him was fine ... those were human things, _Edward's_ mistakes, and the sheer messiness alone was keeping Roy's legs spread and his cock rigid.

It was Edward who came first, leaning hard over Roy's body and whispering things that Roy could not hear. It didn't take very long for Roy to come as well, though ... just the feeling of his lover's orgasm was enough to set him off, because he hadn't felt that in ages.

Gentle kisses were tongued across his spine and shoulders as Edward's cock softened inside him. "Thanks," the blond whispered.

Roy rolled over onto his back and, in the process, discovered that the muscles of his right thigh had painfully cramped up around the wound. Edward went down onto the bed as well; Roy more than half-expected Edward to snuggle up to him, the way Lust usually did, but Edward did not seem to be so inclined.

"I guess I've pretty much fucked up everything here," said Edward after a moment. He raised a still-gloved hand to his face, and Roy glanced away to avoid seeing the tears that Edward was cleaning off his skin.

"No," said Roy. "It's all right."

"I mean, it's really hard," said Edward, as if Roy had said nothing. "I had everything, I thought. I just had to somehow make it back to Central to collect it all. And then I find that ... I have nothing. Al is ... and you're ..."

"Shhhh." Roy rolled onto his side and brushed tangled golden hair away from Edward's face.

"I want it back, Mustang. I want it _back._ I want you back. You're all I've got left."

What was there to say? Roy couldn't promise himself, not with Lust ... not with _Lust,_ who was probably lurking right outside the doorway, having just listened to "his alchemist" have sex with his template. Roy pressed his forehead against Edward's shoulder and tried to ignore the twisting pressure in his belly.

The creature had been as loyal to him as any human possibly could be, and more than most humans were, and he'd ... done this.

Edward had needed it. Roy had needed it himself. Lust had told him to do it.

None of that made it okay.

"What the fuck made you start sleeping with a homunculus anyway?"

Trust Edward to track his thoughts. Raising his head slightly, Roy said dully, "I thought you were dead, Edward."

"That tells me why you thought it was fine to sleep with someone else. And I can understand that, but why a _homunculus?"_

The way Edward said it, as if a homunculus were the most disgusting thing imaginable, was not encouraging. Roy wasn't sure he could explain it under the best circumstances, let alone to that kind of hostility. Eventually, he settled on, "I thought he was you."

"How could you ..."

"Edward." Roy pulled himself up, propping himself up on one elbow so he could lay a hand on the younger man's chest. "He looks like you. He has your memories. He was intended to be you, and you were supposedly dead. I was going to give him _your_ soul, to make him human, before we knew that your soul was ... otherwise engaged."

"You can't make Lust human," said Edward diffidently. "It's just not possible."

"The equations worked out."

"Oh, you could give it a soul ... maybe. But even if it worked, that would turn your homunculus into someone else." Edward closed his eyes and made himself comfortable, pulling one of the blankets half-over his legs. "You can't just turn it human, you'd have to turn it into a specific human, the one whose soul you gave it."

Roy felt a part of his belly go cold. "What makes you say that?"

"Mmmm." Edward began to idly rub his own abdomen, and then began to pick his left glove off his fingers. "The soul is the part that makes you human. I mean ... We all knew ... Al ..."

He broke off, and Roy didn't need him to finish it. "Giving Lust a soul would destroy the person that he is right now," Roy whispered to himself.

"That thing isn't a _person_ to start with." A little frown twisted Edward's lips. "Stop talking about it like it is." The glove finally came off and was thrown off to the side; beneath it, Edward's fingers were covered in healing blisters. He shook his fingers blindly.

Annoyed now, Roy grabbed Edward by the chin and turned the blond's head toward him. An irritated slice of golden eye peered at him. "He isn't a _thing_ either," Roy told that crescent of gold.

"What else could it be? It's not me, it's like ... a doll, who looks like me. It isn't even alive, it just looks like it is because of the alchemy. Let me go, will you? I'm sleepy."

Roy did release Edward's chin, but he was still angry. "He doesn't just look like you. He acts like you sometimes ... a little bit. And he has some of your memories."

Disdain. "Don't be an idiot. How could it have any of my memories?"

Sitting all the way up now, so that he could look toward the doorway, Roy said, "He has someone's." Edward had nothing to offer to that but a scoffing snort, and Roy continued. "I asked him about them a lot, because I really believed he was you. He talked about a river a lot. And your mother. Being ill and staying home from school. Studying ..."

Roy was nearly knocked down by the blond alchemist, so swiftly did Edward sit up. "Where is he?" demanded Edward, scrambling out of bed so fast he almost got tangled in the sheets and fell to the floor.

"... out in the hallway I imagine," said Roy, stunned. "What are you doing?"

Edward was struggling into his pants, trying to pull them up and move toward the door at the same time. His face was pale, stricken and horrified. "Lust!" he called, poking his head out. With his pants undone, and his hair undone and falling everywhere, he gave the very picture of a lover surprised in the act, but Roy was too perplexed by the other man's behavior to appreciate it much.

"He isn't out here," said Edward, and, once his pants were fastened, he trotted out into the hallway, footsteps alternating soft pads and hard clicks on the wood floor.

Not in the hallway ...

Roy still couldn't walk alone. He dragged his pants up onto the bed to numbly put them on, but once that was done he could go no farther. He listened to Edward move throughout the house, calling for the homunculus.

Perhaps he was in the kitchen still ... or the war room ...

After a few minutes, Edward came back. "He isn't anywhere in the house. Where would he have gone?"

"I don't know," said Roy, trying to crush down the worms of fear and guilt that were mating in his belly. "He's never left me before."

Edward gave him an odd look. "He left you just this afternoon, and followed me almost out to the perimeter." And before Roy could reply to that, Edward's expression twisted even more. "Fuck, he _followed_ me almost out to the perimeter ... oh fuck."

Whatever line of thought that Edward was following was too broken for Roy. His companion of seven years was _gone_ somewhere, probably driven away by Roy's own actions, and Edward was just talking nonsense. "What the hell are you trying to say?" he demanded.

* * *

Even this long after dark, in the caressing cold, the soldiers were busy. This wasn't normal; there was an important battle that was going to happen tomorrow. If he was lucky, he'd get to see lot of fighting ... but, more likely, his alchemist would remain at the back of the army, well protected. That was the way it usually went. He hoped he would see a lot of it, though.

Mud and snow were equally cold against his toes as he trotted through the camp.

If he turned around, as he often did as he made his way, he could see the light of the lamp on in the window. The lamp was dim and competed with the other humans' lamps around the camp, but his eyes were sharp and the farmhouse loomed over the flat land. The window glowed with the light, like a beacon, and it pulled something inside him. He'd never seen it from the outside before, not after dark, because his alchemist was always indoors then. He hadn't realized how beautiful it was.

It hurt a little, to turn away from it, to walk in the opposite direction.

His alchemist wanted _him._ _He_ wanted his alchemist. And he, it turned out, was hopeless. There was no reason why _he_ would lie. It was a possibility he had never considered before, but it made sense ... it rang of _truth._ He was, after all, what was left over when a human lacked a soul, and it was the soul that made them human in the first place.

It was a painful kind of truth, but if the only true things were comfortable things, he would never have been born in the first place.

Some of the soldiers tried to talk to him as he moved between them, but he ignored them. He had a long way to go through the camp and not very much time to get there and do what needed to be done, before he was missed.

It should hurt more. He imagined it should hurt a great deal to discover that this was the best he could hope for, that this half-existence was the pinnacle of being. It didn't hurt very much at all, though ... certainly less than dying, or losing a finger, and he'd done both of those many times.

Instead, this truth made him feel light, free. He knew he was smiling as he made his way through the camp.

There was a slight space between the camp proper and the collection of tents that his alchemist always called the alchemists' territory. There was no activity here, and only a few of the lamps were lit. He paused, wondering which one was the correct one, and then began to go from tent to tent, sniffing at the entry flaps. The cold masked many scents, and the choking gasoline from the tanks didn't help, but this was one he'd smelled often and he would know it immediately.

It didn't take very long to find it, the tent with the alchemist that so often came to visit and talk with his alchemist.

The human alchemist was already sitting up when he slid into the tent. "What is ..." said the alchemist, and then, "Lust?"

He raised a talon to his lips, and the alchemist looked frightened for a moment. Stupid. His alchemist was right about that much, this one might have been good at the craft but that didn't necessarily preclude stupidity. Most of them were stupid, in fact. Good at the craft and stupid were, however, just the attributes he was looking for.

Along with a desire to own him. That was important, too.

A light flared. The alchemist was standing up now, alarmed and defensive as he crept farther into the tent, examining the layout.

"What are you doing here? Is the General here?" The human was edging away, toward the entrance. Stupid. Wanting a homunculus, yet alarmed at having him this close. He took a step to the side to cut off the alchemist's escape.

Alchemists liked their luxuries and this one was no exception; the dirt floor of the tent had been transmuted into wood, no doubt to be less cold on the feet. Flicking out three talons, he scratched a few words into the corner.

"What are you doing?" asked the alchemist, before glancing at the words. That stopped the human cold.

_I will show you how to make me yours._

"... what?"

Without waiting for further objections or assent, he began to draw a perfect circle into the wood.

It would hurt, he knew, but probably not as much as he expected. Then everything would fall neatly into place. He knew that he was smiling again as the tips of his claws carved strong lines within the circle, drew words.

It was completely logical.


	13. red with blood the buildings of gods

Skipping quickly down the porch steps in the pre-dawn darkness, throwing a topcoat on over his uniform, Edward all but tripped over the homunculus at the bottom of the stairs. The creature apparently hadn't expected him to come out this way and scrambled to escape him, but was too slow.

"No," he said, shocked at seeing it out here in the pool of light from the porch lamp, but not too shocked to chase it. "No, no, Lust ... Lust, don't go."

Not that it seemingly could; at the sound of Edward's voice, the homunculus stopped dead where it was, trying to stand up but still half-on the ground, whimpering just a couple of yards from the steps. Edward caught up to it easily with it frozen like that, and crouched over it, turning it on the ground onto its back.

It stared up at him with wide eyes, full of ... what? Fear? Terror? Awe? It was impossible to know. Perhaps all of those.

The light wasn't good, but Edward didn't need good lighting to know that there was no humanity in this thing. It was a homunculus. Just the feel of its skin and clothing screamed at him, _inhuman,_ even through his glove. He'd had way too many of these things hurt him, manipulate him, coerce him and try to kill him for no better reason than simple-minded malevolence, and he had to fight the urge to recoil in disgust from this one.

The shape was basically human. The general form was correct. The details were all wrong, skewed, like a human being drawn by an artist who had never seen a human being and had only a vague description to go by.

"Lust," he said, and then trailed off, the homunculus trembling and oddly flaccid under his hands. Relaxed, awaiting its fate.

There were jeeps waiting for him not thirty feet away. What could he say? What could he _ask_ of this bizarre monster in the thirty seconds he had before the driver of one of the jeeps got impatient and started honking the horn at him to hurry?

Damn the thing for making itself scarce until he was in a rush.

It had his brother's memories. It had _Alphonse's_ memories, turned around backward, apparently, so as to seem like they were from Edward's point of view. For someone who didn't know any different, like Mustang for instance, they might seem to be Edward's. But Edward knew better.

There was no possible way for this thing to have his own memories. But for it to have some of its creator's ...

 _Damn_ the thing for disappearing last night!

What else of Alphonse lurked behind those stunned, animal eyes? What else had been branded into its mind during its creation?

Edward stroked the creature's golden hair. He had to know. He had to know what was in there.

"Alphonse?" he whispered. There was no reaction from the homunculus. Its eyes moved, flicking here, there, across his face, but it made no effort to speak.

It probably couldn't. It reacted to him the same way that all homunculi reacted to reminders of the humans they had been intended to be ... if anything, Lust's reaction to him was even stronger. And, interestingly, it seemed to have that reaction only to _him,_ and not to the bits of hair or shed skin dust that he, like any living person, left everywhere around him.

Why would that be, if there weren't some spark of Alphonse inside this thing? Was there any other reason why it didn't react to strands of his hair?

Why else would it have followed him the day before, abandoning Mustang for, apparently, no better reason than to be with him?

"Alphonse," he whispered again, and again there was no reaction.

It was only when he heard the hard blare of the jeep's horn and the driver's yelled, "Major Elric!" that he realized that he was taking too much time and accomplishing nothing.

"Stay with Mustang," he told the thing, probably unnecessarily. "I want to talk to you tomorrow." He let the homunculus go, standing up and retreating, walking backward toward the jeep. The wind caught the skirt of his black coat and bit into his ears. "Stay with Mustang." Then the driver leaned on the horn again, and Edward had to turn and run to jump into the back of the jeep to forestall further abuse of the jeep's horn.

The vehicle started moving before Edward was even completely seated. Aside from the driver, there were two other men in the jeep already, one beside the driver in the front seat, and the other beside Edward in the rear. Alchemists, probably.

Edward turned around to look toward the farmhouse, and thought he caught a glimpse of a golden-haired figure slipping into the building.

"Not a word," said Edward, as he turned around once more to face forward.

The alchemist sitting beside him, a fellow about his own age who was giving him a desperately curious look, said, "What was ..."

"What part of 'not a fucking word' don't you understand?"

"... no, you're not touchy at all," said the man, and turned away from Edward. Edward, irritated, did likewise.

* * *

His left hand trembled a little when he laid it on the stone.

It was cold. He was cold all over, really, but one thing he had to say for military uniforms: they were warm enough, woolen and layered, especially with one of those black oilcloth topcoats over them to cut the wind. His face and ears were numb, his toes ached within his frigid right boot, and his automail was dutifully performing its secondary function of leeching the heat out of the flesh to which it was bolted, referring the cold up into his nerves. Despite those minor details, the uniform that Mustang had forced him into was really relatively warm, considering the temperature out.

It wasn't the cold that made his good hand shake when he laid it on the cliff. It was ...

Twelve miles of stone.

He could feel it under his hands. The weight of the mountain, even though he hadn't touched the living rock with his alchemy yet. He felt like a gnat clinging to the side of the cliff, standing on stone that hadn't seen the light of day in ten thousand years; the talus that he'd shoved to either side to clear the way for the attack group rose fifty feet above his head. It was held there by fused stone walls, a parted sea of loose broken-down rock, exposing the roots of the mountain which hadn't been touched by air since before humans first came to this continent.

This place felt old. It groaned with the weight of ages witnessed by neither man nor beast, but only by the patient mountain, and by time itself.

Withdrawing his hands from the stone, Edward put his palms together and began to whisper.

Having just watched him clear five hundred tons of talus from the base of the cliff, nobody in the attack group arrayed out behind him seemed inclined to try to rush him. He knew perfectly well what it looked like he was doing, and didn't care.

Twelve miles of stone.

When he felt ready, he placed his hands back on the cliff, and it sparked and began to shine under his fingers. He continued to whisper to the blue glow that suffused the cliff as he walked forward, and the rock that had not seen sunlight for ten thousand years dented, and deformed inward under the blunt force of his will.

If he stopped, he knew he would never be able to start up again. Momentum alone would carry him through the mountain. He hollowed out a large chamber first, vaulting the ceiling to deflect the weight of the mountain to the sides, and men and machinery followed him into the darkness. He could hear them talking behind him, but paid no attention; his mind was otherwise occupied, forcing tons of stone out behind him, down into the earth, sideways into the talus slope. He whispered as he walked, a steady subtonal monologue of gratitude to the power that flowed through his body and through his hands.

The amount of rock that he had to move just to get all of the soldiers and tanks inside the mountain was tremendous. Edward didn't dare look around behind him, for fear of losing his concentration; half of what kept the ceiling from falling in was the shape he gave it, but the other half was the transmutation keeping it in flux. He estimated wide, burrowing twice as deep as he felt he probably needed, fanning out the sides of the chamber twice as wide. This was the most difficult part, because the mass of all that stone had to go somewhere, and the only place to put it was outside the mountain. Edward forced the rock down, sideways, and made room to do so by forcing the rock already down and sideways to move backward.

His automail was steady, silhouetted darkly within the pale blue glow, but his left hand trembled.

Briefly, he wondered how the alchemists with the other attack groups were doing this, but put the thought out of his mind almost immediately. He had better places for his attention. Balancing the transmutation, he could feel the pull and push through the threads of the reaction, as feedback. He raised one hand over his head and lowered the other, separating them so as to better gauge the pressure ... feeling the feedback in stereo.

The sides of the chamber were fairly easy to balance, but the mountain was enormous and the pressure it placed on this gap within its belly, this anomaly of space where there should be no space, was tremendous. He knew that the roof would not hold long if he let it go.

Once he felt that the chamber was large enough, he stopped forcing the displaced stone out of the mountain, and began to use it to fill in the tunnel behind him.

This was easier, far easier, than the initial hollowing had been, because it was less like digging and more like riding a wave of transmutation flux. It was only when he felt himself relaxing slightly that Edward realized that he'd been holding himself tense ... bracing himself against the weight of the mountain above him, as though he would be able to physically hold it up.

He walked at a slow pace, not so much pushing the rock aside now, as pushing the bubble of air and humanity forward.

Twelve miles of stone.

Lust was not his brother.

The thought intruded rather abruptly, and Edward wrenched his mind back to what he was doing, focusing once more on the flow of power. He knew where this power originated; perhaps he'd met or even been friends with one of the souls that rippled through his fingers. There was no way to know. Almost automatically, he whispered his thanks, over and over, rhythmically. But this was too easy ... the challenge would be in keeping it up without losing his concentration, and he hadn't gotten a lot of sleep.

By keeping the alchemists in camp until the eleventh hour, and transporting them out to the mountain early in the morning, Mustang had hoped to let them get as much sleep as possible before this exhausting and critical transmutation. It hadn't worked that way for Edward. He'd gotten some breakfast at least, a decent hot breakfast for the first time in what felt like years, but the lack of sleep was not going to be helpful.

It distracted him. The thought intruded again.

Lust was not his brother.

The fact that his brother had created the thing, that Lust apparently had some of his brother's memories, meant nothing. It meant nothing. The homunculus was just that, a _homunculus,_ an amoral, soulless doll with no conscience to guide it; it was only Mustang's control over it that kept the thing from the same kind of malignant violence that he'd seen in other homunculi.

The fact that it had been made in his own image only made the creature that much more disturbing.

But the alchemy to raise the dead, the alchemy that never quite worked, was esoteric in many ways, and there was a great deal about homunculi that Edward did not know.

What else of Alphonse had been imprinted into Lust by the transmutation that was the creature's birth? Lust had no soul, but could it have something else? Some kind of reflection of its maker?

He felt something crack, and his attention flicked immediately back to the task at hand. The reaction flowed into the crack, smoothing it over, bleeding the pressure that had caused the crack off into the air as waste energy. It was no longer cold; the glow of a transmutation gave off no warmth, but pressure and heat were blood brothers, and the deeper he walked into the mountain, the higher the pressure grew.

Twelve miles of stone.

That was merely the horizontal distance. How much rock was pressing down on his head? Not twelve miles, certainly, but more than he wanted to think about regardless.

The idea that Mustang was simply insane occurred to Edward, and settled dispassionately into the back of his mind. Later, he might rail against the man's obvious delusions, but for now, he could not afford to waste any of his energy on useless emotions.

Distantly, he felt another transmutation flicker to life. Then a second. The alchemists that Mustang had assigned with him to this group were competent, and their own reactions were distinct and did not interfere with his own. He could feel them flowing, like the beating of a bird's wing nearby, but they were balanced upon themselves and there was no adjustment required on his part. After a moment, he allowed them to fade from his attention.

He'd walked a long way. How far, he had no idea, nor did he have any notion how far he had left to go. It was easier to just put the concept of a _goal_ right out of his mind. There was no end. He would move forever through this stone, warping it to his will both before him and behind.

He'd begun this tired, though, and his mind wanted to find a comfortable rut, something he could hold and repeat without effort. If he let himself, he could start sleepwalking, and there would be no mercy for him or any of the people with him if he did that.

If that were to happen, he'd never be able to beat the answers he needed out of Lust.

He had no idea what Mustang's plans for Lust were, now that the original plan had been scuttled by Edward's own inconvenient state of breathing. Under no circumstances could he allow the man to put a soul into the creature, certainly not until he knew how much of Al had been printed into Lust, and maybe not after that depending on what he found. Mustang had said that the homunculus behaved like him sometimes but that couldn't be true. Whatever behaviors that Lust had which reminded Mustang of Edward must have somehow originated with Alphonse.

A moment of frustration that he was _here_ instead of with Lust, getting the information he wanted so badly, came perilously close to breaking his concentration. The rock around him was very warm, and easier to transmute because it was already under so much pressure, but harder to hold once the transmutation was underway.

He became aware of sweat dripping down his back, under the uniform, under the topcoat that he'd put on in the freezing outside air but which was completely unsuited to this type of environment. His entire body was trembling now, not just his hand, muscles twitching almost randomly as the power flowed through him. Each step he took was taken on momentum alone.

Some kind of altercation took place behind him, although he didn't notice it until it was almost over, so he had no idea what was going on. No gunshots were fired, so it couldn't have been too serious.

Abruptly, and with no warning at all, another transmutation began somewhere off to his right. This one was _powerful,_ not at all like the small reactions being maintained behind him to keep the air breathable and cool. It was strong, and it hit him like a physical blow; he staggered to one side, away from the radiation of energy.

There had been no hint at all of the other alchemists who were leading their own groups through the mountain. Those transmutations should have been very similar to Edward's own, but the distance between them and the solidity of the mountain had prevented Edward from having even the slightest awareness of them. _This,_ however, was strong enough to bleed right through the rock, over who-knew how far of a distance, and rip through his own reaction like a spray of shrapnel.

Someone touched him on the shoulders, and he flinched, grasping for the tendrils of his concentration to drag his mind back into the transmutation, _back_ where it had to be. He could see nothing except the glow of the reaction, so he had no idea who it was, and it was only when the other person pulled him back up that he realized that he'd gone down to his knees, fingers still on the stone before him. Words were being spoken to him, but he could not spare the attention to understand them; after a moment, the anonymous hands left him.

Forcing his way through the mountain had been hard enough. Doing it while countering the effects of this powerful foreign transmutation was going to kill him. It took him a little while to compose himself again ... he had no idea how long, and didn't care. When he finally began to walk forward again, the first step felt like dragging his feet through half-set concrete. He did it because he had no other choice, but with his momentum lost, it was difficult and painful.

All sense of time had been lost and he made no effort to recapture it. The transmutation was everything. Keeping the reaction balanced, keeping it on a forward trajectory, keeping it _whole_ against the relentless onslaught of blowing energy from the other transmutation ... that was everything.

He spared a moment to wonder just what the fuck was going on over there - who could keep up something that intense for that _long?_ \- but couldn't put any energy into it. Everything that he had was required right where he was. He no longer whispered under his breath; he had no strength left for that.

Unbidden, the face of Lust persisted in hovering inside his mind. Flawless and _young_ as his own had never been, untouched by any of the worries and guilt that had always looked back at him in the mirror.

Whenever the creature managed to look at him, it looked at him as if he were God.

When his reaction reached ahead of him for more stone and met nothing, Edward stumbled again, and fell forward through the gap that had abruptly appeared; there was no more rock in front of him, and his fingers were slipping loose from the reaction. Clawing to the side for the escaping sheets of power as they retreated along with the lip of rock, Edward found himself being caught and held up again by someone. He couldn't let the reaction go yet. The ceiling had to stay up.

But there was daylight, coming down thin and thready from an overcast sky, and bitterly cold air flooded the interior of the chamber.

The front of the cavern he'd been maintaining opened up like a veil, dirt and snow skidding down from above as the supporting rock retreated. Edward was supported and moved from the front, to the side; he was vaguely aware of a rush of movement out of the cavity, people and machinery moving out into the cold. He fought the hands on him to keep his fingers in the transmutation and the reaction balanced. Whoever was holding him up was speaking to him, and trying to draw him back away, out into the light.

"No," he said, but he was too weak to resist, and was pulled free of the reaction. It flickered for a moment on its own, unguided, and then winked out.

As soon as he lost contact with it, he lost all ability to stand, and for a few seconds he found himself looking at the sky as he was carried away from the opening in the mountain. There was something shining, reflecting red off the undersides of the clouds, with a spire of power stabbing up into the sky.

His last thought before the world went dark was, _I remember that._

Then he remembered nothing at all.


	14. a wind-age, a wolf-age till the world ruins

It was all but impossible not to look at the corpses. The fighting had been fairly light for much of the way up into the pass, but about halfway through a considerable resistance had been encountered. The signs of it littered the landscape: churned ground, discarded weapons, burning vehicles and vegetation, huge chips of stone taken out of cliffsides by cannon fire.

And, of course, the bodies. Some in Amestrian blue, some in Drachman brown, some so mangled they were unidentifiable. The stench of death was atrocious, cutting through the cold air, but there was already at least one squad moving through the pass, collecting corpses into a personnel carrier. The medical teams had already been through; at least there were no moans from the injured and dying, and the only bodies left in the snow were those beyond saving.

Seated behind Hawkeye in the middle jeep, Roy tried not to look. He had won, had punched through the Briggs Mountains and clawed out a foothold on the other side, but the sheer volume of death that it had taken to achieve that feat was sobering.

It was nothing that he hadn't seen before, and nothing he hadn't expected. But as the cavalcade escorting him through the pass crawled along the steep and narrow road, between trees destroyed by cannon and over blood crushed into the snow and frozen mud, Roy did not feel particularly inclined toward conversation.

This was technically still a battlefield, since there was fighting going on beyond the lethal transmutation in the second turn of the pass, so his escort was substantial. The cavalcade could move no faster than the armor both preceding and following his jeep, and Hawkeye in the front seat was armed with a rifle. Two more jeeps surrounded him, just in case one of the corpses turned out to be armed, he supposed.

Roy had expected Lust to be excited, since the homunculus always seemed to enjoy the prospect of fighting. The creature didn't appear to be all that interested this time, though, just crouching quietly on the rear of the jeep and flicking his extended talons back and forth. That was fine with Roy, really ... the prospect of having to deal with Lust's utterly inappropriate joy at the promise of human death was something he'd just as soon skip.

Over it all, the array was still glowing.

The twists of the pass between the mountains concealed the array from direct view, and in any case it was probably hidden behind an avalanche. That had been the plan, anyway, and although Roy had gotten no reports of it, he had no reason to think that Brandt had deviated from his orders. The strength of the reaction, however, drilled upward into the sky, and was cast back onto the ground by the clouds. It bathed a vast swath of the pass in ghostly red light, putting pink edges on the snow, and bringing red glitter out of the facets of the exposed granite of the mountainsides. Roy supposed that it could be considered beautiful, in the same way that a sword edged in blood could be beautiful.

He would almost have rather looked at the corpses.

A hand touched his shoulder, resting lightly, and Roy glanced that way. Lust didn't immediately seem to want anything, though ... the homunculus just smiled at him, swaying back and forth as the jeep navigated the rough terrain. Roy reached up to pat the creature's claws, a gesture of comfort that the homunculus probably didn't need.

Then, quite suddenly, Lust leaned down and whispered, "I love you."

Roy did not react for a moment, but then he turned slowly around to eye the homunculus; Lust returned his speculative look with a blank one. Moments passed with nothing further, and Roy asked, "What did you say?"

"I said I love you."

"... why are you saying that?" asked Roy.

Lust did not answer, only smiled brightly at him, and resumed looking at the scenery as it passed. After a long, hard stare, Roy turned around again to face forward.

What he'd done to Lust by sleeping with Edward ... well, he couldn't even begin to imagine it. The thing wasn't human, and never seemed to react the way he'd expect a human lover to react; there was really no way to know what Lust thought of his infidelity unless the homunculus himself chose to discuss it.

Could a homunculus even understand love? Was there enough humanity in Lust to know what love was? And why would Lust elect to say such a thing now?

Turning his head slightly to the side, Roy kept a watch on the creature out of the corner of his eye. Lust did nothing unusual, however. He was keeping a sharp look out, but that was to be expected in potentially dangerous territory - the bulk of the pass was nominally under Roy's control, and there had been no reports of fighting on this side of the array in over an hour, but there were no guarantees.

When he noticed Roy watching, Lust smiled again and flicked the braid on Roy's uniform with his talons. Then he went back to watching the surroundings. After a few minutes, Roy straightened again.

Twisting around slightly in the front seat, Hawkeye said quietly, "Sir? Is that ... array going to stop on its own?"

"It should," he said. "Eventually."

When it ran out of lives to consume.

After a brief, searching look, she said, "Yes, sir."

* * *

"Stop here," said Roy, as the jeep topped a rise. The other jeeps and the tank behind him stopped immediately along with his own; the tank in front of him took a few moments to realize that it was no longer being followed, and ground to a halt fifty yards away.

The avalanche was quite a sight, filling the pass like a spill of sugar. Cast in lurid red by the array still burning behind it, the snow didn't seem to be very deep at first glance, but appearances deceived. The edges of the snowfield created by the avalanche tapered down to the ground, and it looked like one could just drive across it ... but someone had already gotten that idea and turned back just a couple dozen yards in. The wheel tracks were visible as a ruffled dark line, and at their farthest extent into the snowfield had sunk perhaps four feet into the snow. And it doubtless got deeper yet in the middle. It seemed miraculous that the vehicle that had left the tracks wasn't still stuck there in the snow.

It was really quite a bit more snow than Roy had predicted. And as far as Roy could tell, there had been nothing done thus far to move any of the snow from the avalanche out of the way.

Beyond it, a good mile or so from the last visible rock, the light of the array shimmered. The array itself was not visible, but the hungry flickers of its energy spilled onto the far edges of the snowfield. From the center, that finger of light punched skyward, disappearing amongst the clouds.

There was no way to know how many Drachmen had been caught by the array when Brandt activated it, but Roy imagined it must have been quite a lot. Those who had been caught on the eastern side of the avalanche had never had a chance against Roy's attack, and those on the western side ... fed the array. It showed no signs yet of dying down.

The snowfield and the array had, however, stopped his own army dead. One of the attack group leaders had already radioed in to say that they were attempting to mop up the surviving Drachmen, but it was hard going. Roy would very much have liked to move the bulk of his army up the pass as fast as possible, but he hadn't expected quite this much snow, and he certainly hadn't expected the phoenix array to burn this long.

Amestrian soldiers loitered before the snowfield, smoking, cleaning weapons, and generally wasting time. There were an enormous number of them, filling the breadth of the pass before the avalanche, spilling up toward where Roy had decided to stop. What looked like an entire division of armor was lined up a short distance back from the avalanche, with the tank crews crawling over the armor like ants. Roy frowned. Aside from the one line of straggled wheel tracks dragged into the edge of the snowfield, it didn't look like anyone had made any effort at all to make a way to cross.

"What the hell is going on?" he said quietly to himself.

The original plan for clearing the pass involved transmuting the bulk of the snow, but there should have been at least an _attempt_ at opening the pass in a more conventional way before he arrived. With all the other alchemists on the other side of the array with the attack groups, he'd have to do it himself, and this was a lot more snow than he'd anticipated having to move. Any amount of effort that could be put into the project prior to his arrival on the scene would have been helpful.

"Lieutenant Colonel," he said, and Hawkeye turned around again. "Get the division leaders up here. I need to know why everyone is just standing around."

"Sir," she said, and immediately got out of the jeep and went over to commandeer another one.

"Lust," said Roy, and raised a hand as he attempted to pull himself out of the jeep. As Hawkeye evicted the guards in the nearest escort jeep and began to drive it down the rise, the homunculus hopped down to the ground to take Roy's hand and help him.

Once out, Roy discovered that if he leaned most of his weight on the side of the jeep, he could do something that resembled standing on his own; when Lust experimentally released his arm, it didn't hurt too much to have no additional support.

That was better. He was leaning against the vehicle, but at least he was upright, and he felt more like himself when he wasn't sitting on his ass being ferried around like an invalid. Glancing around, he raised his voice slightly. "We're going to be here a while," he told his driver. "If you want to go have a cigarette, you may."

"Sir," said the driver, and got out of the jeep without questioning; he was enlisted, and seemed to know a dismissal when he heard one. He saluted and wandered off toward one of the tanks, where the tank crew was sitting on their vehicle, smoking and chatting.

"Now," said Roy, once everyone was out of earshot. "What's the matter?"

"Hmm?" Muddy yellow eyes glanced up at him, but there was nothing in them that Roy recognized, except a mild curiosity.

"What you said. That you ... love me."

"Oh." Lust shrugged slightly. "I love you. That's all." The homunculus looked away, losing interest again.

Incredulous, Roy eyed his companion, who apparently considered the conversation finished and was scrutinizing the side of the nearest mountain. "That's not all," he said after a moment. "Do you even know what you're saying?"

A familiar wicked smirk curved the creature's lips, and he cast Roy a mischievous look. "Hearing getting bad? Should we get you a horn to listen through?"

"Lust," said Roy sharply. "I know what you're saying, I'm asking if _you_ do."

"They're simple words." Before Roy could get really annoyed, however, Lust continued, "Does it bother you that I love you?"

The abrupt turnabout broke Roy's train of thought. "... it depends on why you're saying it."

Would it bother him, if it turned out that Lust knew what he was saying and meant it? Roy wasn't sure he wanted to think about that yet.

It seemed manipulative, to confess love right after Roy had slept with someone else, especially while Roy should be doing something far more important than trying to decipher this dangerous creature's feelings. Was Lust trying to make him feel guilty, after practically throwing him at Edward? Roy thought that he felt guilty enough without that, and even the suspicion that Lust might be trying to manipulate him annoyed him.

Lust seemed to think it over. "I said it because it's true. Should I not have? You always used to say how you regretted not telling him that you loved him."

"You shouldn't say things like that unless you mean them, though," said Roy quietly. "You're ..."

No.

He broke off before the words could go any farther, but it seemed to be too late; Lust turned his head to give him a wistful smile. "I know that, Colonel. There are things that humans have that I never will. You take them for granted and never even think about them, and I will never have them and think about them all the time. But that doesn't mean I can't love you. That doesn't have anything to do with it at all."

"You heard what Edward said, didn't you?" Roy had known that Lust must have ... but he'd still hoped that the homunculus hadn't.

Lust nodded, and looked toward the mountain again. "He doesn't like me, but he spoke the truth about me."

"Lust ..." Roy raised a hand and touched his companion's shoulder. "Edward ... Edward might be wrong. He's a good alchemist, but he could still be wrong. We'll find another way."

"No ... he was right. It felt true, when he said that. If you gave me a soul, I would die. My body would live, and it would have a soul in it, but I would no longer be me."

The sheer blandness with which Lust said this was chilling. "We'll find another way," Roy told him.

"Even the original way would have killed me. He wasn't wrong. I know that now." Mildly stated, as if discussing something innocuous, and not important at all. "Maybe that's why I wanted it. I love you, though. I want you to know that."

"Lust." Roy pulled on the creature's shoulder, to force his companion to look at him. He recognized this kind of talk now, and cold dread was collecting in his belly. "Lust ... what have you done?"

"General Mustang!"

There was a jeep approaching from farther down the pass, and it wasn't Hawkeye's. One of the soldiers leaning against the most forward tank stepped forward to challenge the jeep, and it stopped in the armor's shadow. "General Mustang!" bellowed the jeep's driver once again, getting out of the vehicle and continuing toward Roy on foot. It was Colonel Hobbs.

"This isn't over," Roy told Lust quietly. The homunculus nodded.

"General," said Hobbs for a third time, as he approached closely enough that he no longer needed to yell. "I must have a word with you."

"Certainly," said Roy. He gave the colonel his most affable smile, although he was seething at the interruption. No matter how little he wanted to see Hobbs, there _was_ a war to be handled; whatever was making Lust talk like that would have to wait. It would have to.

"Sir, I can't agree with this plan to clear the pass," said Hobbs, stopping at the end of Roy's jeep. The man's ears and nose were a bright scarlet, and Roy suspected that only part of it was due to the cold.

"Excuse me?" Roy had been unaware that Hobbs had any objections to Roy's original plan for moving the snow. Certainly there had been none voiced in the planning meetings.

"With all due respect, sir," said Hobbs stiffly, "while that thing of yours is still active, we should leave the snow as it is."

Thing? Roy blinked, and waited expectantly for further explanation, which came a moment later in the form of a jerked thumb over Hobbs' shoulder.

He realized that Hobbs must be talking about the array. That explained why there had been no apparent effort to move the snow thus far; Hobbs was in command of the forces who had stormed straight up the pass, and in Roy's absence would be the one to decide when and how to begin clearing the avalanche.

"We'll need to be mobile as soon as possible after the transmutation stops," said Roy, after getting control of his annoyance. "We need to move as much snow as we can, as soon as we can."

"Yes, sir," said Hobbs, the courtesy coming automatically, although the expression on the colonel's face was anything but agreeable. His voice was stiff and painfully formal. "However, I feel I must point out that that thing of yours is intentionally lethal, and to interfere with it while it's still active would not, in my opinion, be a wise move."

Roy raised his hand and said, "Colonel, it's a mile away."

"Yes, sir, but to clear this snow would require someone to get closer to it. Moving the snow manually would involve sending soldiers into needless danger, and I cannot in good conscious allow you yourself, General sir, to put yourself in danger in order to move it with your ... art. It's better to wait until the thing goes out before trying to clear the pass." He raised his chin slightly, waiting for Roy to agree with him.

Glancing toward the array, Roy had to admit that it did look awfully dangerous. The distance between this side of the avalanche and the array only made the thing that much more impressive ... it was _huge._ Knowing that it was so far away only made its size and power that much more apparent. It was still giving no signs of slowing down, burning as brightly as ever, sending the occasional flickering tendrils of transmutation energy in all directions.

Hobbs would back down if Roy ordered him to - grudgingly - and while he would never voice direct insubordination, an unhappy officer distrustful of his superior had other ways of expressing that distrust. Roy would much prefer the man agree. "I'm pretty sure I know the limits of that array, Colonel," he said casually. That was something Hobbs could never argue, since the man was not an alchemist himself, and to disagree would be to question Roy's competence as an alchemist.

But even that was not enough. "I'm sure you do, General, but I can't say the same for anyone else."

"So," said Roy slowly, "you propose that we sit here, doing nothing, and allow the attack groups on the other side of the pass to fend for themselves. For what would be, I must stress, an _unnecessary_ period of time, time that we could have used clearing this snow and instead used arguing about it."

Straightening up, Hobbs said stiffly, "I'm only trying to prevent running what seems like a needless risk with a dangerous large-scale alchemy, General."

"I understand that," said Roy, and he smiled at Hobbs. "And I appreciate your concerns and your willingness to speak them. But we have to clear this pass."

For a moment, Hobbs looked like he was inclined to argue this point further.

Then something thudded, and kicked up a spray of dirt near Roy's foot.

When he wanted to, Lust could move rather fast. Roy was crashing down on the ground before he knew it, and he had enough time to be outraged before the report from the rifle echoed across the pass, bouncing between the mountainsides.

Another shot pinged off the jeep above him. Lust stood over him, half-crouched, black claws extended.

The guards in the other jeep were scattering, arraying out defensively between Roy and where the shots were coming from, weapons out.

"General!" said Hobbs. Roy glanced over toward his subordinate, who was half-crouched near the front of the jeep, and extending a hand toward him. Only moments had passed, but Roy knew roughly which direction the shots were coming from, and he was on the wrong side of the jeep.

He raised a hand and clasped Hobbs', and let the colonel drag him along the ground toward the front of the vehicle.

The homunculus followed, not assisting Hobbs, presumably to keep his hands free. Lust's claws shot out beside Roy, burying their tips in the ground just as another bullet kicked up dirt beside Roy's arm. Then Roy was dragged around the front of the jeep, and pulled up by Hobbs to sit on the other side.

Lust crouched beside him, and Roy glanced at his companion. The creature was trembling, and holding his flank with his left hand; red fluid dripped down from beneath his fingers. Roy wasn't surprised to see that the homunculus was wounded ... Lust could pick bullets out of the air with his talons if he saw them coming, and it wasn't like him to miss and hit the ground instead.

Crouching against the side of the jeep next to Roy, Hobbs said, calmly enough, "I'm sorry, General, I was told this area was secure."

"It's okay," said Roy. "We'll talk about court-martialing you later." Something warm trickled down his forehead, and he wiped at it; his fingers came back red. "My reflexes are getting terrible."

Hobbs glanced at him and started to say something, then frowned and roughly shoved back Roy's hair. Whatever he saw must not have been too serious, however, because the colonel let Roy's hair drop again with just a grunt. "That creature of yours is pretty quick."

"Yeah, he is." Reaching over to Lust, Roy tried to pry the homunculus' fingers away from the wound, but Lust only hissed and twisted away. The creature was shaking violently now. "Lust, let me see."

He was abruptly deafened by the firing of the armor behind the jeep. Lust, to Roy's total surprise, startled at the noise and pressed himself against Roy's side, burying his face in Roy's shoulder.

More gunfire sounded, drawing return fire from armor in front of the jeep now. Roy wiped more blood away as it dripped into his eye. This was damned inconvenient. Not to mention undignified, sheltering behind a jeep while an unknown group of snipers held control over territory that Roy had theoretically already taken.

"They must be up on the mountainside," said Roy, absently stroking Lust's back, the way he would a frightened pet.

"Yes, sir," said Hobbs. "Your creature seems to be injured there."

"I know." Lust's trembling was only getting worse, and Roy suspected that the homunculus was going to die of this injury. The flow of hot red fluid - not blood, but something analogous - was not slowing, as it would if the wound were healing itself.

"Is it going to be all right?" asked Hobbs. The man sounded vaguely concerned; Hobbs had never made a secret of his dislike of Lust, but that dislike apparently did not extend to wanting the homunculus dead.

"He dies a lot," said Roy. "He's reckless, and got himself killed once on a firing range. Lust, hey. Look at me." Putting fingers under the homunculus' chin, Roy pulled Lust's face up out of his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Colonel," said Lust weakly. "That was quicker than I'd thought."

"It's okay." He ducked instinctively as another shot ricocheted off the jeep, and was answered by cannon fire. Before he could say anything more, the pained tension went out of Lust's body, and the homunculus slumped against him, eyes losing focus.

Roy, who had seen the homunculus die dozens of times, sighed and continued to stroke the creature's hair. "Is anyone moving yet?" he asked Hobbs.

Going up onto his knees, Hobbs peered around the side of the jeep, and said, "Yes, sir. There are a couple of squads heading up toward the mountain now. That would be Vance."

"Good." There wasn't really much chance of the snipers escaping. It was a waste of time to sit here on this cold, hard ground, but he probably would have spent that time arguing with Hobbs anyway. "Once the area is secure again, I'd like to start working on clearing that snow."

"Sir ..." said Hobbs, but Roy raised a hand to forestall it.

"Really, Colonel, you know I always value your opinions, but in this case ..."

Abruptly, Lust made a choked sound, and the body leaning against Roy's shoulder suddenly curled up on itself, claws clenching. Roy looked down at the homunculus, waiting for him to wake up.

It was something he would see again in his dreams for years to follow.

Lust was so reckless with his own safety that he'd died many times ... so many that Roy couldn't count them. Roy knew the entire process of Lust's deaths extremely well, having watched it happen so many times, and by now Lust should be waking back up.

Instead, the world froze, because the creature's fingers were melting.

It was impossible to believe. It was _impossible_ to believe what was happening right in front of him. The entire reality in which Roy existed was suddenly gone, whisked away by the red fluid that was beginning to cover Lust's skin ... that Lust's skin was _becoming_ ... and he could do nothing but stare in disbelief.

"Lust," he whispered, sliding the homunculus off his shoulder and into his lap. Lust did not react and only stared sightlessly, eyes half-open and body locked into a near-fetal position, as his flesh melted like a candle held to a flame. It was happening so fast, so atrociously fast. The red fluid soaked into Roy's pants, slithering hotly over his flesh. Whatever had been inside Roy's belly a minute ago felt like it had been ripped out. The skin of his face tingled.

"What's happening to it?" asked Hobbs curiously.

 _"Lust!"_ Roy grabbed the creature by the shoulders and shook him, scrambling up onto his knees; a stab of pain from his gunshot wound drove up his thigh, and only served to ground him in the fact that this was _real,_ this was _happening,_ Lust was _melting._ Lust had to wake up ... whatever was going on, the creature _had_ to wake up. Roy's hands slid through the red fluid that covered the homunculus' body, and he lost his grip.

As soon as the shapeless mass that had been Lust hit the ground, what was left of the homunculus collapsed in on itself and spread out into the pool beneath it. Clothing, golden hair, ouroborus and everything that had been Lust, everything that Roy had touched and held close at night and begged for forgiveness for seven years, everything that had been born out of the transmutation that had cost Alphonse his life lost its form and crumbled, soaking into Roy's pants and into the rocky ground.


	15. Epilogue: two brothers set up their dwelling in wide Windhome

The warmth of the house was painful on Roy's half-frozen ears and nose. As he shook the snow off his coat and went to hang it up beside the door, words drifted out to him from the study.

"There's the General. I'd better get going."

"He doesn't bite, you know."

"I'm sure you're right, but I never know what to say to him."

"Tell him he's a bastard. He's used to that."

Roy smiled to himself as Lieutenant Brinson said, shocked, "... I can't do that, Major!"

With his coat hung up, Roy hobbled slowly into the study, cane clicking on the warm wood floor.

Walking was no longer painful, but it was difficult. The sensation had never returned to a broad patch on the outside of his right leg, and he lacked enough control over his right foot to keep it from dragging the ground. His gait was slow and awkward; if he attempted to walk at anything resembling a normal speed, he tended to trip over his own uncooperative foot.

It therefore took a little while for him to make it to the study, and neither of the occupants looked surprised at his appearance in the door. In his most formal tone, he said, "Good evening, Lieutenant, Major."

Edward scowled at him, leaning back from the card table that had been set up in front of the hearth; Lieutenant Brinson was hastily trying to straighten up the papers scattered across the table. At Roy's entrance, he took on a somewhat trapped look, and quickly snapped a salute. "S-sir!"

"At ease," said Roy, amused. According to Edward, it had taken Brinson over a month to get to the point where he could speak to Edward without stuttering; it was taking somewhat longer with Roy. The man resumed straightening up the pages on the table, and Roy limped over to snitch one to see what they were working on. The array sketched out on it wasn't complete - like any alchemist, Edward knew better than to draw a functional array that he didn't intend to actually use - but it was fairly complex and had a number of notes in the margins.

Skimming the notes, Roy turned the page toward Edward with a frown. Edward just shrugged. "It's my way," said the younger alchemist.

"If you say so." Roy handed the array back to Brinson, who was mumbling apologies and trying to make his escape. Sometimes it was all Roy could do to avoid forcing Brinson to stay and talk to him, just to try to grind this shyness out of the man, but that would be cruel.

"Thank you," said Brinson, and Roy couldn't tell if it was to himself or Edward. "I'll ... I'll just ... um ... good night."

"Good night, Lieutenant," said Roy graciously, and as Brinson retreated, he took a seat in the armchair across from Edward, where the lieutenant had just been sitting. Fresh wood had apparently just been thrown onto the fire, and it cracked and sent a shower of sparks across the hearth. "You're going to give him a complex about alchemy if you keep telling him things like that."

Folding up the card table and putting it back in its place next to the hearth, Edward said, "You don't like what I teach him, you teach him yourself."

"Where did you get this thing about souls anyway?"

Edward shrugged and made himself comfortable again. "It hardly matters, does it? It's the truth, and I know it's the truth. Where it came from doesn't change that."

Propping his cane against the side of his chair, Roy said, "I never would have expected an answer like that from you. You were always so ..."

"Naïve?"

"Scientific." When Edward frowned, Roy continued, "Saying that this is just the way things are ... that's not very scientific."

"I don't have to offer proof for the fact that the sky is blue, or that things fall when you drop them. Some things just _are."_

"Mmmm." Roy glanced toward the floor; Edward had three books stacked on top of one another near the foot of his own chair. The titles printed on their spines were in Draekin. Probably filched from the Velastok library. There was nothing in town printed in Amestrian, but that was no barrier to Edward, who spoke Draekin so well he occasionally spoke it in his sleep. Draekin wasn't the only foreign tongue to wake Roy in the night, and like this completely unscientific belief in the soul energy of alchemy, Edward would never tell him where those alien languages had been learned. "I'd say that gravity and the color of the sky are slightly more ... readily apparent observations than the notion that alchemy is powered by the souls of the dead. That sounds more like religion than science to me, and I wouldn't have expected that of you."

Edward just shrugged. "Believe what you want." The blonde stood up then, stretched and said, "There's tea if you want some."

"No coffee?"

"Not unless you want to transmute it. I looked everywhere for some this morning, but apparently the whole army is out of it until the next supply run gets through the pass. From the look of the snow, that might be March."

Roy waved at his lover, and said, "Tea's fine then."

He watched the fire crackle as Edward went into the kitchen to fetch the tea.

Lust would have been kneeling beside his chair, he decided. Head on his knee, saying sarcastic things about Roy's inability to go get his own damned tea. Perhaps tapping the floor with his claws, or licking his lips and casting significant looks toward Roy's groin.

As if on its own, his hand dropped to where that golden hair would have been if Lust had actually been present, doing that.

He'd thought that having Edward around would make it hurt less. It was Edward that he'd always wanted when he'd had Lust, after all, but somehow it didn't work that way. Even when Edward was present he occasionally caught himself looking around, checking for the location of someone who wasn't Edward, and was no longer there.

They'd found the array in Lieutenant Colonel Brandt's tent when pulling up the camp to move it from the farm on the southern side of the pass to Velastok. Roy hadn't recognized it; Edward had known what it was immediately. Roy had no idea when Lust had encountered that array in his reading, or when he'd learned to draw it.

With Brandt dead, killed by the phoenix array that he'd activated in the pass, there was no way to know precisely what had gone on between him and Lust ... but from the reassurances scratched into the corner of Brandt's floor, Roy could make a good guess.

_I will show you how to make me yours._

_Don't be alarmed when you activate the array._

_The red stones that my alchemist had given to me must be removed first._

_Don't stop._

Lust could never have been human, but apparently he could make himself mortal. Perhaps that had been enough.

Roy hoped it was.

"Here." A teacup was offered to him.

Roy reached up to take it, but it was abruptly withdrawn before his fingers could touch it. "Hey," he said.

"You don't look so good," said Edward, setting both Roy's teacup and his own on the hearth, and then swinging his leg over Roy's knees to sit in his lap. "What's the matter?"

"You're heavy," Roy told him, but made no effort to get Edward to back off. His hands slid up his lover's thighs and rested on Edward's hips. Edward didn't like to hear about Lust - Roy wasn't sure if it was a lingering hatred for the homunculus, or something else - so he pulled up a different excuse for his melancholy. "There was another attack today."

"I heard." Edward rested his arms on Roy's shoulders, flesh and metal fingers laced behind the back of Roy's neck. "I can't really blame them."

"Neither can I, but I can't tolerate it either."

"What are you going to do?" Edward's voice became cautious. He was always very, very careful not to say anything that could be construed as sympathy for the Drachmen, but Roy knew that Edward had lived in Velastok for three years, and furthermore Edward was just the kind of person who never wanted anyone to suffer. It would have seemed more odd to Roy if Edward _didn't_ have some sympathy for the people whose town Roy's army was occupying. "If you retaliate, it's just going to piss them off more."

"I know that. I'm not sure yet what we're going to do. A couple of the company commanders are wanting to execute all the POWs."

"... what?" Edward's eyebrows swept down as he frowned at Roy. "You're not seriously going to do that, are you?"

Roy shrugged and rubbed one hand up and down Edward's hip. "I don't want to, but it's going to be a long winter, and they _do_ eat."

At one time, Edward would have dissolved into rage at the suggestion of such a thing. The man in Roy's lap was old enough to see the horrible practicality of it, even though it made him recoil. "You know what that would make you, don't you?" he asked eventually.

"Yes," said Roy.

Cool steel fingers brushed down the side of his neck, and Roy turned his head to the side to permit it. "I don't want you to do that," said Edward. "It will make the Drachmen hate you more. It will make you hate yourself. I'd rather feed the POWs myself than make you do that."

Such an Edward thing to say, but Roy knew he couldn't promise his lover anything. He took Edward's good hand in his own and kissed the backs of the blonde's fingers. "We'll see." And then, to change the subject, he asked, "How is the teaching coming, anyway? I forgot to ask earlier."

The glint in Edward's eyes told him that that wouldn't be the end of the discussion, but Edward let it go for the moment anyway. Picking up Roy's tea from the hearth, he offered the cup once more and said, "Fine. He's picking it up pretty well."

Sipping the tea, Roy discovered it to be cool, but not yet cold, and laden with sugar the way Edward liked it; Edward must have handed him the wrong cup. It tasted like a liquid candy bar. As Edward took a sip from the other teacup and made a face, Roy handed his back and said, "What do you think he'll specialize in?"

"Hard to say," said Edward, switching the cups. The teacups had belonged to the mayor's family, who had lived in this house before the occupation; they were bone-white, patterned with a single stylized flower on each cup, and delicate as eggshells. "He seems interested in everything right now."

"I see." Looking toward the fire once again, Roy sipped his cool tea, and rubbed Edward's hip with his other hand.

After a long moment of companionable silence, Edward said softly, "You're all over the place tonight."

"Mmmm." Perhaps he was.

"... where did you go earlier?"

Edward didn't like to hear about Lust. He never wanted to talk about Roy's trips out to the vast cemetery outside the city gates, where both Drachman and Amestrian dead were buried in neat, segregated rows under the snow-laden earth. Not all of the headstones had been given a complete set of dates, and not all the graves contained complete bodies; some contained only those parts that could be found or, in the case of those caught in the array, only dog tags.

One grave contained nothing, and the headstone that stood over it was completely blank but for dates that spanned only seven years.

But Edward never liked to hear about Roy's visits there, so Roy volunteered nothing, and just looked into the fire. After a moment, Edward said, "I didn't want it to turn out that way."

Roy squeezed his lover's hip. "I know."

There was only silence from Edward after that, and Roy wasn't much in the mood to talk. Eventually Edward slid out of Roy's lap.

"I'm think I'm going to head to bed," said Edward, as he picked up the poker from the hearth and began to bank the fire. "You want to stay out here a little longer?"

In a way, Roy wanted to. He could sit out here, thinking about Lust and all the things his longtime companion would have said about this or that, all night if allowed. Instead, he groped for his cane, and began to push himself up to his feet. "No," he said. "I'll come with you."

When Roy had first commandeered the mayor's house, Edward had refused to stay in it at all, sleeping for the first two weeks elsewhere. When finally persuaded to move into the house, he'd slept in the children's room for a while, offering no reason for it. Roy had understood.

They slept together now, however. Edward did not help Roy limp down into the bedroom, but he did help Roy get his uniform off without comment. The master bedroom had its own fireplace, but it was cold, and neither of them moved to light it.

On the mantle over the fireplace, unguarded, the Philosopher's Stone that had been born in the array in the pass glowed like a lamp. It was not fully complete - the number of lives that had gone into its formation was insufficient to produce a flawless Stone - but the power of it radiated like the dawn.

Because of it, the room needed no other light. They slept and woke and had sex under its glow, and sometimes it reflected in Edward's eyes, and darkened them.

Once they were settled under the coverlet and Roy had his lover held tightly up against him, he murmured softly, "I love you, you know."

He could feel Edward's mouth, pressed against his chest, twist slightly. "You say that every fucking night."

"I know," said Roy. "I want you to know it."

"Mmmm," said Edward. "Whatever."

_~fin~_


End file.
